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A "quotation source" is anything from which a quotation can be drawn, such as a book, poem, play, film, tv show, essay, etc. Some quotations, such as proverbs, will not have a source. For more information about entering quotations in Freebase, see the page for the "quotation" type.
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722 Quotation Source topics matching:
Filter this Collection| x name | x image | x Quotations | x article |
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| x Henry VI, part 2 |
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First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. |
Henry VI, Part 2 or The Second Part of Henry the Sixt (often written as 2 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1590 or 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI...
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| x The Tempest |
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...O brave new world, That has such people in't! |
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–11, although some researchers have argued for an earlier dating. The play's protagonist is the banished sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, who initially uses his magical...
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| We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life, is rounded with a sleep. | |||
| x The Luck of the Bodkins |
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...the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. |
The Luck of the Bodkins is a novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on October 11, 1935 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on January 3, 1936 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston.
The story concerns amiable...
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| A young man with dark circles under his eyes was propping himself up against a penny-in-the-slot machine. An undertaker, passing at that moment, would have looked at this young man sharply, scenting business. So would a buzzard. | |||
| x Sudden Death | Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results. | ||
| x The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right |
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An individual's reality model can be right or wrong, complete or incomplete. As a rule it will be both incomplete and wrong... |
In The Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dorner identifies the roots of catastrophe, the small, perfectly sensible steps that set the stage for disaster. In incisive analysis of real-life situations and often hilarious computer simulations he helps...
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| By labeling a bundle of problems with a single conceptual label, we make dealing with that problem easier - provided we're not interested in solving it. | |||
| x Fantasy Island |
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This article is about the television series. For the amusement park, see Martin's Fantasy Island or Fantasy Island UK
Fantasy Island is the title of two separate but related American fantasy television series, both originally airing on the ABC...
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| x Repo Man |
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The more you drive, the less intelligent you are. |
Repo Man is a 1984 cult film directed by Alex Cox. It was produced by Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy, with executive producer Michael Nesmith, and stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton.
Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez), a young punk rocker...
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| x Breakfast of Champions |
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New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. |
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of...
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| x Contact |
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A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. |
Contact is a science fiction novel written by Carl Sagan and published in 1985.
A film adaptation of the novel starring Jodie Foster was released in 1997.
Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway is the director of "Project Argus," in which scores of radio...
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| x The Terminator |
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The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed and co-written by James Cameron and distributed by the independent film studio Orion Pictures. It features Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator, Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor and...
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| x Critique of Practical Reason |
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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe... |
The Critique of Practical Reason (German: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft) is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It follows on from his Critique of Pure Reason and deals with his moral philosophy.
The second...
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| x 2001: A Space Odyssey |
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It can only be attributable to human error. |
2001: A Space Odyssey (occasionally referred to as simply 2001) is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial...
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| I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do. | |||
| Open the pod bay doors, HAL. | |||
| I'm sorry Frank, I think you missed it. Queen to bishop three, bishop takes queen, knight takes bishop, mate. | |||
| I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. | |||
| x Without Feathers |
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What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. |
Woody Allen's Without Feathers (1975, ISBN 0-394-49743-0) is one of his best-known literary pieces. The book spent 4 months on the New York Times Bestseller List. The book is a collection of short stories and also features two one act plays, Death...
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| x The Blind Watchmaker |
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However many ways there are of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. |
The Blind Watchmaker is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his previous book...
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| x The Point! |
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A point in every direction is the same as no point at all. |
The Point! is a fable by American songwriter and musician Harry Nilsson about a boy named Oblio, the only round-headed person in the Pointed Village, where by law everyone and everything had to have a point.
There have been, so far, at least three...
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| x Steps to an Ecology of Mind | Information...is a difference that makes a difference. |
Steps to an Ecology of Mind is a collection of Gregory Bateson's short works over his long and varied career. Subject matter includes essays on anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry and epistemology. It was originally published by Chandler...
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| x A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics | The map is not the territory. | ||
| x Quality Software Management Volume 1: Systems Thinking | Quality is value to some person. | ||
| x Usenet | PrepBut nI vrbLike adjHungarian! qWhat's artThe adjBig nProblem? |
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It evolved from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.
Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979. Users read and post public...
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| x Essays: First Series | A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. | ||
| x Four Quartets | For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. |
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's...
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| We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. | |||
| x Wired |
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The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something. To my mind, it’s much better to remove things. |
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since March 1993, that reports on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast Publications, it is published in San Francisco,...
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| Ethanol is for drinking, not driving | |||
| x Revelations of Divine Love | Sin is behovely, but all shall be well... |
The Revelations of Divine Love (which also bears the title A Revelation of Love — in Sixteen Shewings above the first chapter) is a book of Christian mystical devotions written by Julian of Norwich. It was the first published book in the English...
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| x Tao Te Ching |
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The skillful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels... |
The Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing (simplified Chinese: 道德经; traditional Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodéjīng), originally known as Laozi (simplified Chinese: 老子; traditional Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ), is a Chinese classic text. Its name comes from the...
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| He who stands on his tiptoes does not stand firm... | |||
| He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent... | |||
| The soft overcomes the hard; and the weak the strong. | |||
| Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao... | |||
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| x Everybody's Autobiography | There is no there there. |
Everybody's Autobiography is a book by Gertrude Stein, published in 1937.
It is a continuation of her own memoirs, picking up where The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, published in 1933, left off. Both were written in a less experimental, more...
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| x The Myth of Sisyphus |
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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem... |
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955.
In the essay, Camus...
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| Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. Discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Edipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. | |||
| x Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man |
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The medium is the message. |
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a 1964 book by Marshall McLuhan.
The book is the source of the well-known phrase "The medium is the message". It was a leading indicator of the upheaval of local cultures by increasingly globalized...
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| We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. | |||
| x Gutenberg Galaxy | The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village. | ||
| x The Bell Jar |
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To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. |
The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book is often...
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| x Tender is the Night |
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Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure. |
Tender Is the Night is an English language novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues. It is ranked #28 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th...
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| x The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock |
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I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. |
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by the American poet, T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of...
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| Do I dare disturb the universe? | |||
| In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. | |||
| In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. | |||
| x The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
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…[I]n order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain. |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the antebellum South, in the town of "St Petersburg", inspired by the town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River, where Mark Twain grew up...
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| x The Restaurant at the End of the Universe |
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In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. |
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980, ISBN 0-345-39181-0) is the second book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams. It was originally published by Pan Books as a paperback. The book was...
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| x The Mysterious Stranger | Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time |
The Mysterious Stranger is an unfinished work and the last novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. It was worked on periodically from roughly 1890 up until his death in 1910. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain...
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| x Last Chance to See |
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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others… |
Last Chance to See is a book written by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine first published in 1990, as a companion to the BBC radio series of the same name. The theme of documentary was to feature animal species which were endangered or threatened...
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| I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer… | |||
| x Eleonora |
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They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity; and thrill; in waking; to find they have been upon the verge of the great secret. |
"Eleonora" is a short story written by American author Edgar Allan Poe, originally published in 1842.
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| x Tradition and the individual talent | Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion… |
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) is an essay written by poet and literary theorist T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published, in two parts, in "The Egoist" (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Sacred Wood" (1920)....
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| x The Gold-Bug |
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It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. |
"The Gold-Bug" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Set on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the plot follows William Legrand, who was recently bitten by a gold-colored bug, as well as his servant Jupiter and an unnamed narrator. Legrand pulls the...
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| x A Farewell to Arms |
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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places… |
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1929. The novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during...
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| x A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
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You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. Some early editions are entitled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.
The novel explains the tale of Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of...
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| x The Salmon of Doubt |
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We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. |
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously unpublished material by Douglas Adams. It consists largely of essays about technology and life experiences, but its major selling point is the...
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| x The Hollow Men | This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. |
The Hollow Men (1925) is a major poem by T. S. Eliot, the Nobel-Prize-winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of...
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| x Army of Darkness |
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Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun. |
Army of Darkness (also known as Evil Dead III, Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness or The Medieval Dead) is a 1993 comedy horror/adventure film and the third installment in the Evil Dead series. Bruce Campbell stars as protagonist Ash Williams who finds...
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| x Gospel of Matthew |
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Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. |
The Gospel of Matthew (Gk. Κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον, Kata Matthaion Euangelion or τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ματθαῖον, To Euangelion kata Matthaion) is one of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life...
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| It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God | |||
| It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. | |||
| Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. | |||
| Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. | |||
| more ▼ | |||
| x Gospel of John |
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A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. |
The Gospel of John (literally, According to John; Greek, Κατὰ Ἰωάννην, Katá Iōánnēn), is the last of the four canonical gospels. This non synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details the story of Jesus from...
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| x Blade Runner |
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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. |
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is based on the novel Do Androids Dream of...
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| More human than human | |||
| The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. | |||
| x Buckaroo Banzai |
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Buckaroo Banzai is the lead character, played by Peter Weller, of the eponymous 1984 cult film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. A renaissance man, the character is a top neurosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver,...
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| x The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension |
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Remember; no matter where you go, there you are. |
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! (often shortened to Buckaroo Banzai) is an American science fiction film that has reached cult film status. It was released in 1984, directed and produced by W. D. Richter, and concerns the...
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| x Old Irish Saying | If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to. | ||
| x Ogden Nash |
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A flea and a fly |
Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known...
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| x Arab proverb | Trust in God, but tie your camel tight. | ||
| Lying and stealing are next door neighbors. | |||
| Pardon is the choicest flower of victory. | |||
| A wise man's day is worth a fool's life. | |||
| He who eats alone chokes alone. | |||
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| x Republican Party Reptile. The confessions, adventures, essays and (other) outrages of P.J. O'Rourke | The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say. | ||
| These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper. | |||
| The Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies is supposed to have subscribed to the "Village Voice" for six years in an attempt to find out about life in America's rural areas. | |||
| I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck. | |||
| Smoking cigarettes seems to alarm peace activists much more than voting for Reagan does. | |||
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| x All the trouble in the world. The lighter side of famine, pestilence, destruction and death | Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. | ||
| x Holidays in hell | To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze. | ||
| x How to drive fast on drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed and not spill your drink | When it comes to taking chances, some people like to play poker or shoot dice; other people prefer to parachute jump, go rhino hunting, or climb ice floes, while still others engage in crime or marriage. But I like to get drunk and drive like a fool. Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you're half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose, and a teen-age lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban sidestreet. You'd have to watch the entire Mexican air force crash-land in a liquid petroleum gas storage facility to match this kind of thrill. If you ever have much more fun than that, you'll die of pure sensory overload, I'm here to tell you. | ||
| x Unleashing Janus |
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Chaos has sexy arms... |
Unleashing Janus is a science fiction by San Francisco writer Ted David Harris.Plot blurb from the back of the book:As Josh argues with his eccentric co-worker Travis about the prospects
of artificial intelligence, he never dreams he will soon get...
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| x The Mishnah | Say not, when I have leisure I will study; you may not have leisure. | ||
| x The Koran | The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr. |
The Koran is the name of a translation of the Qur'an written by John Medows Rodwell. It uses a chronological method of sorting verses in the Koran and is noticeably skeptical of Islam. Rodwell's translation has not aged well with time and many find...
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| x VALIS |
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Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. |
VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God.
VALIS is the first book in the VALIS Trilogy of novels including The Divine...
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| x Http://www.edge.org/discourse/digital_maoism.html | It's not a revolution if nobody loses | ||
