Breaking Ground
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Aphorisms
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Teaching is like prostitution — you got it, you sell it, and you still got it!
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
When you move something to a more logical place, you can only remember where it used to be and your decision to move it.
Proofreading is more effective after publication.
History does not repeat itself; historians repeat each other.
Ask some people what time it is, and they’ll tell you how to make a watch.
A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
The I.Q. of a group is inversely proportional to the additive total of that of the individuals in the group.
To find the I.Q. of any committee or commission, first determine the I.Q. of the most stupid member and then divide that result by the number of members.
Anything designed to do more than one thing does no thing very well.
There is no bottom to worse.
Had the Edsel been an academic department, it would be with us yet.
We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.
Dullness is directly proportional to the number of brown suits in a crowd.
If you hear that everybody is buying a certain stock, ask who is selling.
Cat hair is attracted to and will adhere to anything except the cat.
People like crowds. The bigger the crowd, the more people show up. Small crowd, hardly anybody shows up.
Only in opera can 300 pound sopranos die from consumption.
There is no virtue in consistency if you are consistently wrong.
Don’t start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don’t; they’ll make you look like chopped liver.
Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor. —Mark Helprin
If you’ve got a problem that can be solved with money, you don’t have a problem.
The last grand act of a dying institution is to issue a newly revised, enlarged edition of the policies and procedures manual. —Eric Hoffer
Dividing 100 percent responsibility between two persons gives 10 percent to each of them.
It’s better to be lucky than good, but slightly less reliable.
A dog is a dog until he’s facing you; then he’s Mr. Dog.
The topic you seek is never in the index.
Why is it that when a professor says, “That’s a good question,” he never has a good answer?
Any event can be made to look mysterious if relevant details are omitted.
The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn’t belong to anyone, ever.
If you are always at the top of your class, you’re in the wrong class.
Blessed is he who has nothing to say, and cannot be persuaded to say it.
In American schools, your popularity is inversely proportional to your grade point average.
The main problem with self-evident truths is that they aren’t self-evident.
The purpose of organizations is to stop things from happening.
The university catalog is much like the campus — it lies about the university. —Thomas J. McKeon
The person who answers the phone in an organization knows the least of anyone.
Anything with teeth sooner or later bites.
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary building.
Anything will conduct if the voltage is high enough. Anything can be welded if the current is high enough.
Any idea held by a person that was not put in by reason cannot be taken out by reason.
If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem; but if you owe a million, it has. —John Maynard Keynes
No repair job is done until you bleed on it.
Never be flippantly rude to elderly strangers in foreign hotels. They always turn out to be the King of Sweden. —Saki
It is amazing how much theory we can do without when work actually begins.
It doesn’t take all kinds; we just have all kinds.
Well, of course, you can’t avoid watching television. I mean, what would life be but an endless series of real experiences. —Tom Shales
When you put a spoonful of fine wine into a vat of sewage — you get sewage. When you put a spoonful of sewage into a vat of fine wine — you get sewage.
They can’t chase you if you don’t run.
You can’t make a fact out of an opinion by raising your voice.
I have never known a superior person who was a snob.
In order to learn from mistakes, you have to recognize you are making mistakes.
Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one in which you are least interested, and say nothing about the other.
The logical man has a shorter life expectancy than the practical man, because he refuses to look both ways on a one-way street.
A well-fed wastebasket will serve you better than the best computer.
The easier it is to correct mistakes, the more often mistakes will be made.
My good friend Jacques Monod spoke often of the randomness of the cosmos. He believed everything in existence occurred by pure chance with the possible exception of his breakfast, which he felt certain was made by his housekeeper. —Woody Allen
“Come, muse, let us sing of rats.” — A verse from an early draft of a poem by James Grainger (1721-1767), who deleted the line when he discovered that his listeners would dissolve into spontaneous laughter the moment it was read.
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…” — The last words of General John Sedgwick spoken while looking over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864.
Our biggest enemy is going space crazy through loneliness. The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes. —Holly (Primary Computer aboard the Red Dwarf)
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. —G.K. Chesterton
Nothing is more frightening than ignorance in action. —Goethe
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. —George Bernard Shaw
Obviousness in always the enemy of correctness. Hence we must invent a new and difficult symbolism in which nothing is obvious. —Bertrand Russell
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations. —J.R.R. Tolkien
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. —Galileo Galilei
For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. —Robert G. Ingersoll
No man can step into the same river twice, for the second time it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man. —Heraclitus
A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. —Samuel Johnson
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world. —Felix E. Schelling
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