Like many another naif, these thinkers, reflecting on the manifest inability of their methods of truth-seeking to achieve stable and valuable results, innocently generalize from their own cases and conclude that nobody else knows how to discover the truth either.
-- Daniel Dennett, Postmodernism and Truth
Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm myself down. I'll go over to the person's house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to the door, I'm gone, but you know what I've left on the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of its head with a note that says "You." After that I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.
-- Jack Handey
I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting -- saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all.
-- Alexander Stepanov (interview)
Did you know all of the new textbooks that I'm aware of are metric? Now, I understand the metric system very thoroughly. I taught physics. I'll take a metric quiz against anyone you know. But I'm not sure I want a kid coming to help build my house that doesn't know what a two-by-four is. So if you are a patriot, make your paper 39.37 inches square instead.
-- "Dr." Kent Hovind, "Creation Seminar", part 4a
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
-- Charles Darwin
Elegance is not optional.
-- Richard O'Keefe
Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few.
-- George Berkeley
Of all the classes of men, I dislike most those who make their livings by talking -- actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. All of them participate in the shallow false pretenses of the actor who is their archetype. It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause of the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.
-- H. L. Mencken
The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't.
-- The Principia Discordia
Have you considered the option of getting the joke? If not, try it now and redeem your soul.
-- Erik Naggum
I wish I lived on a planet that had two suns -- regular sun and "rogue" sun. That way, when somebody asked me what time it was, I'd say, "Regular time?" And they'd say, "Yeah." And I'd say, "Sorry, all I have is rogue time." It'd be fun to be a stuck-up rogue-time guy.
-- Jack Handey
The Lisp world does not need more Scheme texts, even if they cover Common Lisp. It needs more Common Lisp texts that show how Common Lisp is still way ahead of the pack, that it rises tall like a sequoia in an underbrush of weeds competing for the attention of people who fail to look up when they bump into the huge tree and instead walk around it, not believing those who told them they had just missed something. Like the sequoia, Common Lisp survives the brush fires and has built-in means of coming out on top. That is what should be taught in Lisp texts, not "how to disguise a sequoia among the weeds".
-- Erik Naggum
Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man believes or disbelieves in spite of himself. They tell us that to believe is the safe way; but I say, the safe way is to be honest.
-- Robert Ingersoll
The scientists at the Institute thus discovered the driving force behind all change, development and innovation in life, which was this: herring sandwiches. They published a paper to this effect, which was widely criticised as being extremely stupid.
-- Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
-- Alan Perlis
To praise one man, it is enough to quote his words; and the same will serve to disgrace another.
-- The Underground Grammarian
I always laugh every time I read some so-called smart guy whine about how ugly wikis are because they use the default font or something equally ridiculous. If the diligent had concerned themselves with analysis like that, the World Wide Web would have never made it past interlaced GIFs.
-- Sunir Shah
It takes a wise man to learn from his mistakes, but an even wiser man to learn from others'.
-- Zen proverb
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
-- Francis Bacon
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
Computability theory and lexical scoping are fine things to know about, but they just don't cut the mustard when somebody from the Psych department opens up on you with an Ingram set to full auto.
-- Olin Shivers
This is a test of the Apocalyptic Emergency Broadcasting Network. Had this been an actual apocalypse, you would have been sent hurtling towards Hell. Because Betty Bowers is a better Christian than you.
-- Betty Bowers: America's Best Christian
Windows has detected that a gnat has farted near your computer. Press any key to reboot.
-- Simon Oke
I like to ask people who complain about parentheses in Lisp if they are bothered by all the spaces between words in a newspaper.
-- Kenny Tilton
If I can see farther it is because I am surrounded by dwarves.
-- Murray Gell-Mann
The human race will decree from time to time: "There is something at which it is absolutely forbidden to laugh."
-- Nietzche on C++
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
-- Andy Rooney on Perl
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state-appointed shrink is our friend.
-- Jack Handey
Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.
-- Syndey Harris
But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday's heresies have become today's new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.
-- Daniel Dennett, Postmodernism and Truth
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
-- Aldous Huxley
To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
-- Jack Handey
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
-- H. L. Mencken
The metaphysical point is that a functional thing is only identifiable as such within some such historical context. To think otherwise is to indulge in the most obscurantist essentialism. Consider: suppose there was a universe that was empty (for all time) except for the existence of a single object, which just happened to be atom-for-atom indistinguishable from a lima bean. Would it be a lima bean? What do your essentialist intuitions tell you? (Mine are silent, or at any rate, I can't stop giggling long enough to consult them.) Now replace the lima bean with a cardboard placard on which is printed "Cold Beer Sold Here." Would it be a (false?) representation? History without metaphysics is just one damn thing after another, but metaphysics without history is too silly for words.
-- Daniel Dennett
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent". I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
-- Stephen Jay Gould
And STILL he don't say nuttin'. He maintains what is called the noble silence. Sometimes called the thunder of silence, because this silence, this metaphysical silence, is not a void. It is very powerful. This silence is the open window through which you can see not concepts, not ideas, not beliefs, but the very goods. But if you say what it is that you see, you erect an image and an idol, and you misdirect people. It's better to destroy people's beliefs than to give them beliefs. I know it hurts, but it is The Way.
-- Alan Watts
Bertrand Russell, in a lecture on logic, mentioned that in the sense of material implication, a false proposition implies any proposition. A student raised his hand and said, "In that case, given that 1 = 0, prove that you are the Pope." Russell immediately replied, "Add 1 to both sides of the equation: then we have 2 = 1. The set containing just me and the Pope has 2 members. But 2 = 1, so it has only 1 member; therefore, I am the Pope."
-- Don Lindsay
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
-- Alexander Jablokov
I gave it one star only because there is no option to register negative stars. This is the most tragic waste of celluloid since Freddy Got Fingered. $25 million for Osama Bin Laden seems like a fortune until you realize that it took 4 times that much to bring the most infantile script, the world's worst acting, and the most overproduced non-tale of fluff to the big screen. Michael Bays should be banned from ever making another film, shackled, and sentenced to walk the earth for eternity trying to explain to the public why he's such a jackass.
-- Netflix Member Review of Pearl Harbor
I have long since given up dealing with people who hold idiotic opinions as if they had arrived at them through thinking about them.
-- Erik Naggum
There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.
-- Richard Dawkins
Being really good at C++ is like being really good at using rocks to sharpen sticks.
-- Thant Tessman