Home > My Favorite Quotations

My Favorite Quotations

Famous Last Words
Murphy's Laws
Philosophy
Politics - The Kennedys, Winston Churchill, Politics and Political Bloopers
Shakespeare
Software

Woody Allen

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.

Woody Allen

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

Woody Allen

Software Engineering

The bug which you would fright me with I seek.

From "A Winter's Tale" By William Shakespeare

Managing software engineers is as easy as herding cats.

GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Any given program will expand to fill all the available memory.

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in. We're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

Nathaniel Borestein

Memory allocated for buffer twenty bytes, memory written to nineteen bytes, result happiness. Memory allocated for buffer twenty bytes, memory written to twenty-one bytes, result misery.

Micawber's Law Of Memory Allocation

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Bill Gates

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Bill Gates

99 programming bugs in the code
99 programming bugs
Fix one bug, compile it again:
Now there's 100 bugs in the code!

(repeat until bugs = 0)

Programmer's Drinking Song

In the world there are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Famous Last Words

They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.

General John Sedgwick

Talking about enemy sharp shooters just before he was killed by one of them

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do!

Oscar Wilde

Infamy! Infamy! They all got it in for me!"

Julius Caesar

Actually Kenneth Williams as Caesar from "Carry On Cleo"

It can't end like this. Tell them I said something.

Pancho Villa

Philosophy

Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

Friedrich Hegel

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

From "David Copperfield" By Charles Dickens

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.

Max Born

Sport

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude, it's much more serious than that.

Bill Shankly

Golf is a good walk spoilt.

Mark Twain

The only thing I know about boxing is always bet on the black guy.

Frank Drebin

The only thing I know about football is always bet on the team in red.

Scottish readers don't need to be told this only applies to English football

Oh dear, he'll probably go on to make a hundred.

Chris Scott

Chris Scott was the Durham wicketkeeper when they played Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 1994. He had just dropped batsman Brian Lara when he was on 18. Lara went on to score a record 501 not out!

Films

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.

Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Bladerunner

TV Shows

If you talk to God then you are religious. If God talks to you then you are psychotic.

Hugh Laurie as Dr. House in House

Sherlock Holmes

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

The Blanched Soldier

Gregory: Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.

Silver Blaze

Birmingham

They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr Weston. One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

From Emma by Jane Austen

During the half hour or so I sat staring through the top windows of that tram, I saw nothing, not one single tiny thing, that could possibly raise a man's spirits.

From English Journey by J.B. Priestley

I consider any year wasted that does not include a visit to Birmingham.

Gore Vidal

I suspect Vidal may have been talking about a Birmingham in the USA not the UK

Miscellaneous

I like deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

Douglas Adams

May you live in interesting times.

Ancient Chinese Curse

Never play poker with a man called "Doc" or trust a man who looks you plumb square in the eye.

Mark Twain

It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

Mark Twain

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

Jerome K. Jerome

If a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he thereupon said, 'Then I shall take it from you by brute force,' I should, old as I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, 'Come on.' But if, on the other hand, he were to say to me, 'Very well, then I shall take proceedings against you in the Court of Queen's Bench to compel you to give it up to me,' I should at once take it from my pocket, press it into his hand, and beg of him to say no more about the matter. And I should consider I was getting off cheaply.

Jerome K. Jerome

The atom bomb will never go off and I speak as an expert in explosives.

Admiral William Leahy (in 1945)

You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck. I have no time for this nonsense.

Napoleon on Robert Fulton's Steamship

Experience is something you don't have until just after you need it.

The trouble with young people today is that they spend too little time at their studies and too much time having fun. They no longer respect the old and they have no manners. They despise all authority, contradict their parents and beat their teachers. They devour their food ravenously and talk on and on leaving no chance for others to speak.

Socrates 469 B.C.-399 B.C.

The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.

A new broom sweeps clean but an old broom knows where the corners are.

Barbadian Proverb

Honi soit qui mal y pense – Evil be to he who evil thinks

Edward III

Tell me Debbie, what first attracted you to short, balding, millionaire Paul Daniels?

Chat show host Mrs Merton to Debbie McGee

Debbie McGee was an attractive, young magician's assistant who married Paul Daniels, a millionaire magician 20 years her senior.

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

Susan B Anthony

Money doesn't buy happiness but it allows you to be miserable in comfort.

John Lennon