Quotes etc.

(A bunch of quotes and other little things)

Time spent in sharpening the axe may well be spared from swinging it.

Josiah Strong (The Times and Young Men)
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The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

J. Krishnamurti
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We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Samuel Beckett
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It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)
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You must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool

Richard P Feynman (Cargo Cult Science)
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Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon's razor
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The lowest form of dismissal is mere factionalism: to automatically dismiss any idea associated with the opposing faction. The lowest form of all is to dismiss an idea because of who proposed it.

Paul Graham, Crazy New Ideas
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Don't fear moving slowly. Fear standing still.

A Chinese proverb ( From Paul Graham's quotes )
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A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck
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Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

J. K. Galbraith (Letter to Kennedy)
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Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

Simone de Beauvoir
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What doesn't kill you makes you compute efficient.

u/nanowell (on r/LocalLLaMa)
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A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open.

Frank Zappa
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Quid melius quam nihil, sed omnia volo!

Varghese K James
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You shouldn't wallow in self-pity. But it's OK to put your feet in it and swish them around a little.

Guindon
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To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.

Robert Heller
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Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so.

UNIX Fortune
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The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized -- and never knowing.

David Viscott
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Note: The following were parsed from a JSON export of my Telegram "Saved Messages". Because of this, they might contain formatting errors, wrong citations, and sometimes nonquote text.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche (Adapted from Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
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When you fall and scrape your knees you're technically getting hit by a planet and walking away with only a scratch

A YouTube comment
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A test for any character, whether a main character or a side character, is to simply ask 'Describe this character without saying what they look like, their job, or what they do in the story'. The more you can say, the deeper the character. If it's hard to think of anything, then the character is paper thin and needs re-writing.

A comment on YouTube by user @Noodles.Doodles
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If at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it.

Albert Einstein
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Love is like a force (that obeys the superposition principle). The net force may decrease due to other forces, but the individual force is still the same.

Jyoti
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Not all those who wander are lost.

JRR Tolkien
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Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Matsuo Basho
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Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."

Albert Einstein
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Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

Melvin E. Conway
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And if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself.

Paul Graham (http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html)
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Let them drown in the insignificance of their own mediocrity

Prof. Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty (IIT-KGP)
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It's a little wrong to say tomato is a vegetable. It is very wrong to say that it is a suspension bridge.

Big Bang Theory
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If at first you don't succeed, reduce your expectations until you're a success.

Stuff Made Here (YouTube)
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Code is there to explain the comments to the computer.

Andy Harris
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Hi,
I hope this email finds you well.
I just have a quick question: do you really think I'm that dumb?
Kind regards,
Niccolò Venerandi

niccolove
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I'm not questioning your honour, I'm denying its existence.

George R.R. Martin
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Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain
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How fast time passes depends on which side of the bathroom door you're standing on.

Zall's Second Law
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God was drunk while writing our destiny.

Jyoti Sahu
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'It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.

Socrates
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Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.

Unknown
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I came to some of my own philosophical conclusions some time ago.

Rambling of a madman, or the trappings of a prophet. Either works. Both are the same.

100 years from now, we're dead. 200 years from now, everybody we know is dead. We can die at any point when we choose to, so march onto the horizon of your choosing, for if you'll die, die on your own terms.

Worship no gods, follow no prophets, kneel for kings.

March across the horizon.With friends if you can. Alone if you must.

But always forward.

There's no purpose except the ones we make. Go make your own

A
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Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

Zawinski's Law of Software Bloat
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Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson's Law
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A complex system that works has evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system built from scratch won’t work.

Gall's Law
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The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.

The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.

Terry Pratchett being a total linguistics master
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Poems are rafts clutched at by men drowning in inadequate minds.

Juliam Jaynes, The Emergence of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (context: greek epic poems in the aftermath of bronze age societal collspse as the stringers of social structures)
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I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed

Unknown
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Chemistry is not a subject, it is subjective.

The Kota Factory
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I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words.

Unknown
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Writing about music is like dancing about architecture

Frank Zappa
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Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):

Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse. But the only
number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of legs.

Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere, there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse of another color, and by the lemma "All horses are the same color", that does not exist.

UNIX Fortune, adapted from a popular joke in mathematics
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Option Paralysis:

The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none .

Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
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Everyone is entitled to my opinion.

UNIX Fortune
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Accessibility Features - it is one of our topmost goals to make MS-Windows 95 more accessible for people with various disabilities than it is today. At the moment, work is carried out on making Win95 usable by men and women of inadequate intelligence (I.Q. 250 and less), and by people who have an extremely low amount of patience. Thus, people who wish to spend more time doing actual work than doing system maintenance, may eventually be able to use this OS.

(https://www.shlomifish.org/wysiwyt.html)
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Only three things are infinite: the universe, human stupidity, and the amount of patience that Windows Update requires.

(https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Windows-Update/)
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It's just apartment house rules
So all you 'partment house fools

Remember one man's ceiling
Is another man's floor
One man's ceiling is another man's floor

Paul Simon, One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor
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Envy, n.:

Wishing you'd been born with an unfair advantage, instead of having to try and acquire one.

UNIX Fortune
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Please don't put a strain on our friendship by asking me to do something for you.

UNIX Fortune
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 _________________________________________
/ You are only young once, but you can    \
\ stay immature indefinitely.             /
 -----------------------------------------
   \
    \
        .--.
       |o_o |
       |:_/ |
      //   \ \
     (|     | )
    /'\_   _/`\
    \___)=(___/

Unknown
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Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.

UNIX Fortune
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What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he’s certain he’ll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?

Voltaire
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Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
A cheese sandwich is better than nothing.
Therefore, a cheese sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

An example of quaternio terminorum (fallacy of four terms)
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We need better nonsense

The Science Asylum
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Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watch you!
In America, there's plenty of light beer and you can always find a party. In Soviet Union, Party always finds you

A couple of "Russian reversal" jokes
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In a world where politicians are outright goobers trumpeting flagrant ignorance with pride, do we really think we have to be experts to contribute to the varied, random conversations of the day?

aconsciousrethink.com
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Writing is essentially 'thinking in a way that expects other people to understand it.

a reddit comment
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The people with ideas have no power and the people with power have no ideas.

Mike Murdock
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Never ask if things can get worse. Nine times out of ten, the universe will interpret it as a challenge

a reddit comment (adapted)
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"Agar zindagi mandir hai toh relatives chapal chor hain."

Jyoti Sahu, c.2022/23
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It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Francis Bacon
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Rest in entropy

Jyoti Sahu, c.2023
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If no one comes from the future to stop you from doing it then how bad of a decision can it really be?

a tumblr user
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Edge is Google Chrome but wearing a blue shirt that has Google scribbled out and Microsoft written on with permanent marker.

u/deathschemist on PCMR
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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark too read."

Frank Zappa
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Oh damnation damnation! Thy other name is school-teaching and thy residence is Woodbury

Walt Whitman, on being a schoolteacher (during a time when being a teacher was messy and disreputed)
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This quote from Rod Hilton is very appropriate here:

He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius, I figured he must be a genius.

Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius, I figured he must be a genius.

Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius, I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.

Unknown
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Good luck!"
- Passive
- Vague

"Your victory is inevitable."
- Assertive
- Ominous

Varghese K James (vicfic)
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I won't just gaze into the abyss, I'll maintain uncomfortable eye contact with it.

exurb1a
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I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.

Randall Munroe, what-if
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The cost of procrastination is the life you could’ve led

Unknown
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Real eyes realize real lies.

Unknown
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Abandon depression, embrace megalomania

Unknown
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Lord, I'm a loyal customer of yours through my prayers and, as you know, the customer is always right. Please make sure you deliver the promised miracles by tomorrow or I will be speaking to your manager.

Unknown
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Learn from the mistakes of those who took your advice.

Unknown
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Unorthodox display of hubris but very well.

Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions (YouTube)
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I can switching between vicious self-hatred and an unyielding god complex at a moment's notice (and then unlock a secret third version where I am both the most worthless human being to ever live and better than everyone else at the exact same time).

Unknown
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Three can keep a secret only of two of them are dead and the third is cursed to speak only in spoonerisms.

Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions (YouTube)
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Problems that go away by themselves come back by themselves.

a wise man
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A fool and his money are soon parted

Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie
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Of course I talk to myself. I often need to consult an expert's opinion.

Unknown
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Heisenberg's car is pulled over and a cop asked: "Do you know how fast you were driving, Mr Heisenberg?" "No, but I exactly know where I am.

Unknown
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These are my friends, and these are my enemies. The ones over there are still under review.

Unknown
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... the ideal gas law, much like our culture, has really unrealistic expectations when it comes to size and attraction."

Hank Green, Crash Course Chemistry
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All speech is free but some speech is more free than others.

Unknown
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Apophasis: a rhetorical device wherein the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up.

Unknown
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If this food is the last thing I ever tasted, I wouldn't be surprised.

Unknown
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One of the most frightening things I've ever heard is when someone pointed out that the existence of the uncanny valley implies that at some point there was an evolutionary reason to be afraid of something that looked human but wasn't.

Unknown
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Italy had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. Mussolini was the Man; he had the Vote.

Terry Pratchett
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I am half-ambidextrous

Unknown
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Beware of doing wrong to any hermit. How could a hermit forget? How could he repay? Like a deep well is a hermit. It is easy to throw in a stone, but if the stone sank to the bottom, tell me, who would get it out again?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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Good poetry is like hot coffee. You'll scald your tongue on it and you won't be able to taste anything for the next six hours.

nikhilmwarrier
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God is dead, God's always been dead
We are maggots, blindly writhing
in the decaying, celestial carcass.
Eating ourselves bloat, in wait for Oblivion

Random online comment that I found funny
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I'm a Human Being, not a Human Doing.

Kurt Vonnegut
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Computer Modern Free Font Family is the family of typefaces developed by Donald Knuth for TeX. It’s so good-looking that some scientists do research just so they can write it up in Computer Modern.

Unknown
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As an engineer, I feel obligated to submit a true engineer approach. For any x, sin x = 0, with +/- 1.1 error tolerance. (experiments show the error is between -1 and +1, but let's add 10% safety margin).

Unknown
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Reminds me of the last guy to get electrocuted on the chair as capital punishment, James French. He said, "how's this for a headline? 'French Fries!'

Unknown
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Yat bhaavo tat bhavati
(You become what you belive)

Source disputed. Believed to be adapted from one of the Upanishads
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As a comedian (sadly, I don't remember who) once said: "In my house we don't throw away perfectly good food. We put it in the back of the refrigerator for a few weeks until it goes bad and then we throw it out.

Unknown
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If you can take to the galactic stage without forgetting your lines, then yours is the cosmos and everything in it.

Unknown
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An AUR I love is the one that downloads a Windows Enterprise ISO, gets the fonts from it, installs them, and then deletes the ISO. And I think the package explained how nothing of this violated Microsoft TOS. It's ttf-ms-win10-auto

Unknown
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After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.

Martha Stout: The Sociopath Next Door
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Kurt Vonnegut: Mother Night
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Whoever has really sacrificed anything, knows that he wanted and got something in return.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
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Insanity is the exception in individuals. In groups, parties, peoples, and times it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
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Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All-too-Human
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What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

The Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert's Dune
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Are you cerebrospinal fluid? 'cause I can't get you out of my head

Unknown
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Are you https? Because I'm :// without you

Unknown
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Wisdom has been chasing you, but you've always been faster

Unknown
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What do you think of the Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a great idea.

Mahatma Gandhi (allegedly)
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Intelligence is knowing that humans are apes, wisdom is using that knowledge in practice.

Unknown
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The best villains are those who make you question your owm morality

Unknown
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Ubuntu, aka Orange Hat Enterprise Linux, is a fork of Windows Server 2019. It uses the GNU Hurd Kernel and Plan 9 coreutils instead of NT. It pioneers many flagship technologies like SystemD, GNOME and Snap packages.

nikhilmwarrier
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Stubbornness: Because somebody has to be right and it might as well be me.

Unknown
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Rocks are soft and squishy. They just tense up when you touch them.

Unknown
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“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."

Master Oogway
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Rule 1 of home repair : anything can be fixed with a hammer

Rule 2 of home repair : anything can be used as a hammer

Unknown
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Que sera, sera (Whatever will be, will be)

Song written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans
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... as long as education is synonymous with cramming on an organized plan, it will continue to produce mediocrity.

H. E. Gorst, The Curse of Education
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Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

Edward Lorenz on Chaos Theory
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Americans are people who translated English to English and still got it wrong

Unknown
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He may be an extremist and he may be kind of nuts but he's right

a quote about RMS
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I love this timeline, we come to a point where a professional software developer is waging war on anime girl

A comment on the whole Niccoló Venerandi vs babyWOGUE drama on YouTube
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i like the "modicum of creativity" argument when it comes to copyright. if the original work had creative value (i.e. something that needed creative thinking), which was replicated in the derivative work without adding its own creative value, then it should be considered a violation

Tushar Sadhwani
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Getting a GitHub ban is a badge of honor in my book. Writing code too dank for public consumption.

Someone in a Telegram chatroom
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So many red flags that Karl Max is blushing in his grave

Unknown
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Reductio ad cordvidae
(Proof by crow)

Unknown
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Always make sure your mate has a better looking bicycle than you. The thief will always go for that one instead of yours.

A YouTube comment
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I paid for the whole speedometer, so I am going to use the whole speedometer

Unknown
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Never let your schooling get in the way of your education

Variants attributed to Grant Allen and Mark Twain
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Straight as a boomerang that doesn't function properly because it is so straight

A CollegeHumor Sketch
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Look at the world around you the way Cliff Stoll looks at Klein Bottles

u/Andrew_Eh04 on Reddit
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The most successful drug dealers don't do drugs.

Unknown
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🎶 God is recording this
🎶 Won't you look at the sky?

Unknown
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2006 TIME magazine Person of the Year

Unknown
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Anakin: "Is it possible to learn this power?"
Palpatine: (grins) "Not from a Jedi. Which is why I used SkillShare! SkillShare is an online teaching and learning community where you can learn just about anything. Use coupon code PLPTN and get two months free!

Unknown
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If something appears irrational but has stood the test of time, it is probably very rational in ways we just haven't discovered yet

Unknown
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When life gives you lemons, call them "Yellow Oranges" and sell them for double the price

Unknown
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Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say

Edward Snowden
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Avid collector of dust

Unknown
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Zoologically improbable and terrifying to small children

Unknown
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