"I like something with 'vice' in it."
- Ted Turner, new Vice Chairman of Time Warner
"Headhunting was what they had lived for. Though it might seem callous or frivolous to say so, headhunting had been the most tremendous fun, and without it life lost almost all its zest."
"We would bet a Jeep Cherokee that if people in any place in Europe were stuck in their driveways or on poorly plowed roads for more than two or three days, they would storm city hall, even if they had to ski to get there."
"In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."
"Our desires attract supporting reasons as a magnet the iron fillings."
"The longing for certainty and repose is in every human mind. But certainty is generally illusion and repose is not the destiny of man."
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
"Just remember—when you think all is lost, the future remains."
"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it."
"To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified."
"Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money. Greatness once and forever has done with opinion."
"The NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one."
"The first measure of a free society is *not* that its government performs the will of the majority. We had that in 1930s Germany and in the South until the '60s. The *first* measure of a free society is that its government protects the just freedoms of its minorities. The *majority* is quite capable of protecting itself."
"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 or 20 years from now she will come to me and say, 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
"This is America, darn it, and I have the right to say whatever I want. Except that maybe it's not America. You may have *said* it in America, but in 15 minutes, when your message gets to England, you may be breaking anti-blasphemy laws. You don't even want to think about what happens when your message gets to Saudi Arabia."
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again."
"UNIX: It doesn't just give you rope to hang yourself with. It gives you the gallows, the hangman, and the jeering crowd."
"This signature project was my last, best hope to seem eloquent. It failed. But in the year of Decency In Communications Act, it became something greater. My last, best hope for satire. The year is 1996. The Place: Babbling On Pine."
"Gutenberg thought Bibles were the killer app."
"At Suck, we abide by the principle which dictates that somebody will always position himself or herself to systematically harvest anything of value in this world for the sake of money, power and/or ego-fulfillment. We aim to be that somebody. You wanted feedback? Cover your ears and watch your back ... it wants you too."
"The revolution won't be televised; it will be posted."
"The Mac was a major step forward in the marketplace and, by comparison, almost nothing has happened since. It took all the other computer companies more than five years to copy Apple and, in some cases, they have done so with inferior results, even today."
"Windows 95's look and feel mimics MacOS...but the overhaul is still skin deep."
"Windows 95 = Mac 89"
"I don't object to Microsoft's monopoly, I object to Microsoft's mediocrity."
"Like the Old West, today's digital frontier also has its dangers, its fierce struggles for power and for control of resources, and its bitter conflicts of values. And like the Old West, the digital frontier has nourished a culture of zeaolous individualism and entrepreneurialism. It has its gold rushes (Wall Street), its uncharted lands (the Internet), its territories newly opened to farmers and homesteaders (the World Wide Web), a pony express (electronic mail), plenty of outlaws (hackers) buy nary a sheriff (security), and its few settled towns (e.g., America Online and Prodigy) where decent folk can enjoy some of the comforts of civilization. One can even find ruthless and greedy railroad barons (Microsoft) running roughshod over those who get in the way."
"For every slacker in Generation X, there is a gung-ho explorer or entrepreneur, ready to ride the digital technology to go where no one else has yet gone."
"The future has already arrived; it just isn't evenly distributed."
"Why bother to gaze into the future? In 50 years the world changes completely—but everyone who could notice and comment is shellshocked or dead."
"You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough."
"Throwing down your sword is also an art of war. If you have attained mastery of swordlessness, you will never be without a sword. The opponent's sword is your sword."
"It is not possible to find morality in struggles for power. Your enemies view you as you do them and likely regard themselves as virtuous in their attempts at mayhem upon you. In struggles for power, your judgements should be based entirely on self-interest and finding as direct and economical a route to your goal as possible. If that route is bloody and barbaric, so much the worse for those who oppose you."
"If you must do something at a time inconvenient for you, be less than brief, say less than nothing, do nothing more than show up and reschedule."
"Time is money—steal some today."
"I hold it to be of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy; but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you."
"Love's an illusion."
"It's the only illusion that counts, my friend."
"Says who."
"Anybody who's ever been in love."
"Love sucks."
"No, your attitude sucks."
"You got any balls down there?"
"Just about the biggest pair you ever saw."
"Gentleman: Free your minds."
"I'd like to free something."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor.' But I tell you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and sends rain to the righteous and to the unrighteous."
"Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that."
"Frosty the Snowman, was a big cold white fat guy."
"I'm that phat, and all that."
"If elected, my first act will be to kill the whole lot of you and burn your town to cinders."
"This is The Assassination Game! Paranoia! Trust no one! Shoot first and ask questions in class."
"Ah, the Virginia Pep Band. There's an organization that has withstood more adversity than any Band in the nation—and they're still standing tall. They rush in where Athletic Departments fear to tread."
"You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."
"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning."
"Fair's fair."
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
"Only the other day we read in the newpapers some bunkum about a middle-aged morals offender who pleaded guilty to the violation of the Mann Act and to transporting a nine-year-old girl across state lines for immoral purposes, whatever these are. Dolores darling! You are not nine but almost thirteen, and I would not advise you to consider yourself my cross-country slave, and I deplore the Mann Act as lending itself to a dreadful pun, the revenge that the Gods of Semantics take against tight-zippered Philistines. I am your father, and I *am* speaking English, and I love you."
"Victory is not won in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more."
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
"Do the thing and you will have the power."
"The number of things Jefferson did, or knew how to do, still astonishes. He was a mathematician, surveyor, architect, paleontologist, prosodist, lawyer, philosopher, farmer, fiddler and inventor. He set up an educational system; he built a university; he founded a great political party; he helped design the national capital; he was instrumental in establishing America's coinage; he doubled the territory of the United States; he invented machines and gadgets; he collected scientific materials in the fields of zoology, geology and anthropology; he wrote a classic essay on poetry; he codified the legal system of his native State. Everything interested him; nothing was alien to his mind."
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
"I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers."
"Science is powerless to explain
This amount of stimulation
To the body and brain"
"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams."
"Do not tell fish stories where people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."
"Is this true or only clever?"
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."
"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest."
"I would not enter on my list of friends the man who needlessly sets foot upon a worm."
"Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself to not to worry. Worry never fixes anything."
"Drop the question of what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day that fate allows you."
"What America needs now is a drink."
"Keep your libraries, keep your penal institutions, keep your insane asylums... give me beer. You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer. It does not need your lectures and charity. The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer."
"'THE PENIS! MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD!' No... wait... that's '*PEN* *IS*....'"
"That isn't love. That's *bullshit*."
"Do you want confession."
"Uh, maybe later, Father. Where I'm going, I'd just have to come right back."
"Now let's kill that fucking band."
"Give the guy a gun, he think's he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."
"So easy to pick up... so hard to put down."
"The video-game phenomenon called Doom has given us sore wrists, shattered careers, and more hours of video violence than a thousand John Woo films."
"I sat back letting my mind work without pushing it. Push your mind too hard, and it will fuck up like an overloaded switch-board, or turn on you with sabotage.... And I had no margin for error. Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out. Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. Like one of those thinking machines, you feed in your question, sit back, and wait..."
"Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right actions arises by itself."
"Do you imagine that the universe is agitated?
Go out into the desert at night and look up at the sky
This practice should answer the question"
"Adulthood, one could say, is when it begins to occur to you that you may not be leading a charmed life."
"Postgraduate life, once fluid with adventure and experiment, has become a mixture of Slacker alienation and Blade Runner survivalism."
"I have two credos I hold above everything else: money is everything. more is better. anyone who thinks differently is completely deluding themselves. art is only art if someone will pay to see it. nothing in life can be accomplished without adequate capital. the only thing money can't buy is good kneecaps."
"Putting down her mug, she said that before I got into one of my Exercised Young Man states, I should realize that the only reason we all go to work in the morning is because we're terrified of what would happen if we *stopped*. 'We're not built for free time as a species. We think we are, but we aren't....' She was saying that most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives, the rest is filler, and that at the end of our lives, most of us will be lucky if any of those moments connect together to form a story that anyone would find remotely interesting."
"He thought he was gonna die, but he didn't
She thought she just couldn't cope, but she did
We thought it was all over, but it wasn't
It hadn't started yet"
April 17, 1996