Chapter 16 QUOTES "Things are always at their best in their beginning." - Bliase Pascal "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." - Mark Twain "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison, science fiction author "History is a race between education and catastrophe." - H.G. Wells "...is like trying to nail jelly to a tree." - from an unknown book about a the difficulty of learning a computer programming language. Starkle, starkle, little twink, Who the heck I am you think? I'm not under the akafluence of incohol, It's just that some thinkle peep I am. - unknown "People with great minds talk about ideas. People with average minds talk about events. People with small minds talk about other people." - Ann Landers "I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us." - Konrad Lorenz "I couldn't wait for success, so I went on ahead without it." - Jonathan Winters "I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it..." -Samuel Goldwyn [as a journalist] ..."You are responsible not only for what you do, you are responsible for what you see." - an outspoken Soviet journalist "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." - Armand Hammer "It is better to accomplish perfectly a very small amount of work, than to half do ten times as much." - from the book, Inquire Within, 1858 "When we all remember we are mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." -Mark Twain "A man with a watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches isn't so sure." - unknown This line of poetry was generated by a computer working with random poetry software: "My engine starts to rev when you blow in my beer." "This field of physics is so virginal that no human eyeball has ever set foot in it." - unidentified Ph.D student "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." - Mark Twain "We have no system; we have no rules, but we have a big scrap heap." - Thomas Edison (Some of his workers called it the "dungyard.") "You can observe a lot just by watchin'." - Yogi Berra "Someday, composers will write music only computers can sing." - Clifford Pickover, IBM researcher "Creative people must entertain lots of silly ideas in order to receive the occasional strokes of genius." - Marshall Cook What was this artist trying to say? "In my most recent paintings, I find myself stressing the linear antipathy of massive forms of light in contra-distinction to cattogrammatic and syncogrammatic antipodes of stasis." "I telephoned the Mensa offices in England. Explaining how a friend of mine was, by their definition, thick (he had, I told them, an I.Q. of 80 or so), I suggested that perhaps he and I, or even a group, could add together our intelligence quotients and apply for some sort of joint membership. While the person at the other end of the telephone went off to inquire whether they accepted entrants on these terms, I quietly replaced the receiver, my last doubts confirmed." - Nigel Ffooks "Procrastination means never having to say you're sorry." - Toni Epstein, New York "It's a pity that taxpayers don't read science fiction. They might know about the age they're buying." - unknown "Every serving of processed food is treated with one or more dyes, bleaches, emulsifiers, antioxidants, moisturizers, desiccants, extenders, thickeners, disinfectants, defoliants, fungicides, neutralizers, artificial sweeteners, hydrolyzers, anticaking and antifoaming agents, curers, hydrogenators, fortifiers, antibiotics, arsenic, artificial sex hormones, and pesticides." - Joseph Beasley, author of The Impact of Nutrition on the Health of Americans "I was afraid that we were at a place where we were no longer going to be inheriting life from our fathers, but we were going to be borrowing it from our children." - Robert Redford After Dentist Horace Wells used anesthesia for the first time in history to extract a tooth painlessly (1844), his associates suggested that he get a patent. He said, "Let it be free as the air." "Overheard at a perfume counter in a large department store: 'If this stuff really worked, would I be standing here eight hours a day?'" - Ann Landers "What we ought to do now, obviously, is suspend all activity until we can hold a plebiscite to select a panel that will appoint a commission authorized to hire a new team of experts to restudy the feasibility of compiling an index of all the committees that have in the past inventoried and cataloged the various studies aimed at finding out what happened to all the policies that were scrapped when new policies were decided on by somebody else. Once that's out of the way, I think we could go full steam ahead with some preliminary plans for a new study with Federal funds of why nothing can be done right now." - North Dakota Senator I.E. Solberg "Of course truth is stranger than fiction. We see so much less of it." - Ivern Ball "There's no way to rule innocent men." - Ayn Rand "I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped." - The Gestalt prayer, by psychologist Fritz Perls "As soon as man applies his intelligence and only his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object." - Lev Tolstoy "If I had to choose between pain and nothing I would always choose pain." - William Faulkner "When we first look straight on at all this [American industrial and personal waste], it's easy to fall into despair, overwhelmed at the picture of Yankee know-how run amok, chopping up mountains and rivers to produce Barbie Dolls and Screaming Yellow Zonkers. But before you crumple up in a heap, notice the critical link in this awesome chain of industrialism. The reason for overconsumption is overconsumers. If the consumer refuses to be manipulated and makes wise choices that are not based on advertising, he - she - we! - can save the planet." - Laurel Robertson, in her book Laurel's Kitchen