If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who rest assured are not dumb and are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV Spring Break on Primary Day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.
— David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone, April 13, 2000
A man who knows his road can occasionally jump off it, whereas a man who does not know his road can only be on it by accident.
— Eric Gill
If failure is not an option, then neither is creativity. If failure is not an option, don’t waste time with trust. If failure is not an option, you’d better stay in beta forever. If failure is not an option, you can only keep doing what has worked in the past. If failure is not an option, you can act only on things you can measure. If failure is not an option, neither is experimentation. If failure is not an option, life lacks dimension.
If failure is not an option, success is not an option.
— Andy Rutledge, “Failure,” UnitVerse
Programming is an exercise in overcoming how wrong you’ve been in the past. At first you’ll overcome the syntax errors, then you’ll overcome the structural errors, and then you’ll come to align your code with the standards of a greater community and you’ll feel safe and like you’ve made it. You haven’t – you’re still wrong because you’re always wrong. You are playing a game you cannot win. And let’s face it – if it was a game you could win you’d not be playing at all.
— Guy English, “I’ve Been Wrong Before,” Kicking Bear
If you haven’t trashed your computer while doing something questionable, then you’re not a computer scientist – you’re just an arts grad who didn’t get laid.
— Dominic Connor, “CompSci Graduates More Skills,” The Register
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.
— P.J. O’Rourke
You teach kids how to succeed when they successfully foil the educational system.
— Arlo Guthrie
The price of reliability is simplicity, and for many engineers that is too high a price to pay.
— Unknown
Never underestimate that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
FWIW the Vegas hotel that flew your live lobster from Maine into a desert would appreciate your reusing your towel. For the environment.
— Merlin Mann