This is the queer fortunes file from YAK.MACC.WISC.EDU converted to ASCII as I
said I would do.  I attempted to re-format it better for 80-columns but could
not because each quote would have to be handled manually.  I have been unable
to secure permission for posting to QRD but the file was offered on GayNet for
general redistribution (the owner never replyed to request).  The source
FORTUNE files were retreived from the following:

/pub/fortune/fortunes.tar.Z
/pub/fortune/fortunes.README

-------
Budget:  A mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.
-- A.A. Latimer

The house of delusions is cheap to build, but drafty to live
in.
-- A.E. Housman

There is no law that vulgarity and literary excellence
cannot coexist. 
-- A. Trevor Hodge

Statistics are like a bikini.  What they reveal is
suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
-- Aaron Levenstein

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once
they have exhausted all other alternatives.
-- Abba Eban

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman

Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real
thoughts. 
-- Abel Stevens

Q: Dear Abby: A pair of gay men is moving in across the street.
   What can we do to improve the neighborhood?
A: You could move.
-- Abigail Van Buren

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are
not the better for it.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see
themselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong
impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Do not be deceived.  Revolutions do not run backwards.
-- Abraham Lincoln

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my
religion.  I could never give assent to the long, complicated
statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln

It's better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak
and remove all doubt. 
-- Abraham Lincoln

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as
a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses
are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
-- Adam Smith

The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought
to be.  The natural disposition is always to believe.  It is
acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity,
and they very seldom teach it enough.
-- Adam Smith

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that
sometimes he has to eat them.
-- Adlai Stevenson

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose
that's just one of the risks he takes.
-- Adlai Stevenson

What a man knows at fifty that he didn't know at twenty is,
for the most part, incommunicable.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Making peace is harder than making war.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of
struggle must not be just fine words for patriotic holidays,
words we subvert on weekdays, but living, honored rules of
conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil Liberties
Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so.
-- Adlai Stevenson

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
-- Adolf Hitler

Racism is a universally understood term referring to the
degradation and lack of civil rights of a group of people
from the same cultural background.  Take for example a 5th
generation Jewish person from California and a Jewish person
from Jerusalem.  Both are Jewish but they may have *very*
different upbringings and life experiences that would in any
way distinguish themselves from their common culture.  Any
group of people sharing a commonality can be considered a
race.  I mean, the KKK think of themselves as a race and they
don't include all whites (I am not sure about that one,
could you look it up in your handbook?).
-- Adryenn Ashley

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they
do large misfortunes.
-- Aesop

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in
anxiety.
-- Aesop

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
-- Aesop

Any excuse will serve a tyrant. 
-- Aesop

They say that one must cast unspeakable things
Into the pit of forgetfulness, into sealed tombs,
That by the written word, evil, raised up again,
Will infect the customs of later generations;
But knowledge is not the mother of evil,
And virtue is not the daughter of ignorance.
-- Agrippa d'Aubigne
   "Tragiques"

I rather like not wanting to refer to "doctors" and "*women*
doctors".  I try to avoid allowing any variable to pretend it
is the ground of being.
-- Ailsa Murphy

From the happy typo collection: Why are you ruinning away
from an argument?
-- Ailsa Murphy

Dad taught me everything I know, but he didn't teach me
everything *he* knows.
-- Al Unser, Jr.

In a recent lecture on dairy physics: "We have on the left a
spherical cow of uniform density, on the right is a
spherical hay stack of uniform density.  The two are
separated by an infinite fence of infinitesimal thickness
delta.  Now, before looking at the governing
relationships...let's make some assumptions."
-- Alain Bouchard

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further
than the crowd.  The man who walks alone is likely to find
himself in places no one has ever been.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt

[We must] seize control over our own destiny in order to
assure that the changes we experience in the future do not
mirror our past.
-- Alan Dershowitz

The person discriminated against -- whether black or white --
is undoubtedly hurt, but there is a real difference
between the institutional impact and intensity of the hurt
suffered as part of an invidious pattern or racial
*subordination* and as part of a benevolent pattern of
racial *equalization*.  As Oliver Wendell Homes once put it:
"Even a dog understands the difference between being
stumbled over and being kicked."
-- Alan Dershowitz

*Jews* are not to blame for anti-Semitism.  Anti-Semitism is
the problem of the bigots who feel, express, and practice
it.  Nothing *we* do can profoundly affect the twisted mind
of the anti-Semite.  We should never take -- nor refrain
from taking -- any action just because of its anticipated
impact on anti-Semites.
-- Alan Dershowitz

Spare us, please, from the charge that we insist on "special
indulgence." Understand, please, why we do not place our
full trust in the kindness of strangers.  And stop -- in the
name of basic decency and simple equality -- demanding of us
what no one demands of others.
-- Alan Dershowitz

Not all the intended victims were Jews.  But all the Jews
were intended victims.  That reality, made so eloquently by
Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, is lost on the typical visitor
to Auschwitz.
-- Alan Dershowitz

The great diversity of our nation's population demands that
all students be exposed to the experiences of our varied
population.  White Christian children should learn about the
experiences of Jewish children during the Holocaust, of
black children under slavery, of Japanese-American children
during the World War II detention, of Native American
children during the period when we decimated them, and of
other groups during times of crisis.  Such learning should
take place not in the name of "equal time" for all
religions, but rather in the name of good education.
-- Alan Dershowitz

No group of parents should have the right either to prevent
other people's children from being educated or to require --
as a quid pro quo -- that they be equally exposed to the
religious doctrines of Christian fundamentalism.  It's bad
enough that these parents may be denying their own children
the educational tools necessary to cope with the diverse
society into which they will be graduating.  It is too much
to give them a veto over the education of the rest of our
children.
-- Alan Dershowitz

Anyway, the data clearly refutes those who claim
homosexuality is "not natural" in some sense.  At worst,
they could claim that it is maladaptive, but most human
behavior short of being a dedicated breeding machine is
maladaptive to some degree.
-- Alan Filipski

Happiness can depend on the glance of a stranger, caught and
returned.
-- Alan Hollinghurst

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of
computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent
of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.  As in all the
arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.
If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a
springboard for personal and societal growth, should any
less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?
-- Alan Kay
   "Computer Software," Scientific American,

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have
to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
-- Alan Keightley

To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's
responsibility as a free man.
-- Alan Paton

And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the
words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords.
-- Alan Watts

No one imagines that symphony is supposed to improve as it
goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach
the finale.  The point of music is discovered in every
moment of playing and listening to it.  It is the same, I
feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are
unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether
to live them.
-- Alan Watts
   "This Is It"

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
-- Albert Camus

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes
without having asked any clear question.
-- Albert Camus

You cannot create experience.  You must undergo it.
-- Albert Camus

Liberty is the right not to lie. 
-- Albert Camus

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the
present.
-- Albert Camus

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover,
through the detours of art, those two or three great and
simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
-- Albert Camus

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus

I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become
what I will be.
-- Albert Einstein

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-- Albert Einstein

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on
sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is
necessary.  Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be
restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after
death.
-- Albert Einstein

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem.
It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an
existing one.
-- Albert Einstein

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government
and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be
enforced.
-- Albert Einstein
   "Ideas and Opinions," 1954

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not
simpler.
-- Albert Einstein

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are
not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not
refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein

I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein

It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in
the name of which they can hate one another.  Once it was
religion.  Now it is the State.
-- Albert Einstein

I play with images.
-- Albert Einstein
   when asked where his ideas came from

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to
the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me
than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

Only a monomaniac gets what we commonly refer to as results.
-- Albert Einstein

Politics is for the moment.  An equation is for eternity.
-- Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. 
-- Albert Einstein

The important thing is never to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition
from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein

What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at
all conceivable.
-- Albert Einstein

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it
has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
-- Albert Einstein

The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one
must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be
the truth.
-- Albert Einstein

Common sense: The collection of prejudices acquired by
age 18. 
-- Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but
delicious in the years of maturity.
-- Albert Einstein

We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the
methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more
effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty
to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
being used for the brutal purpose for which they were
invented.
-- Albert Einstein
   September 1948

There is no clear dividing line in sexual behavior between
gay men or lesbians and bisexuals.  People with similar
sexual histories identify differently.  It is important for
us all to recognize this and respect each others choices,
not to project our world-view on someone else.
-- Albert Lunde

Pride is a vice for those who have too much and a virtue
for those who don't have enough.
-- Albert Lunde

When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of
money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it.  The
easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy
shares.  I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid
that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish
for war.  So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in
the event of war.  This he did.  I lost my money and saved
my soul.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen
and thinking what no one else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Space is an illusion created by objects in juxtaposition.
Ornament is what we put on the objects to make the space
more interesting.
-- Alberto Ricart

We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to
us.
-- Aldo Leopold

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
-- Aldous Huxley

Technological progress has merely provided us with more
efficient means for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
   "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," 1956

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what he does
with what happens to him.
-- Aldous Huxley

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant
popularity of dogs.
-- Aldous Huxley

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life.  The
only completely consistent people are the dead.
-- Aldous Huxley

Chastity:  The most unnatural of the sexual perversions.
-- Aldous Huxley

The Tao: the result of subtracting the universe from itself.
-- Aleister Crowley

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall not be
disappointed.
-- Alexander Pope

"Number Seven" opened last night.  It was misnamed by five.
-- Alexander Woollcott

The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in
front of it.
-- Alexander Woollcott

The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry
it, sometimes three.
-- Alexandre Dumas

Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some
useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
-- Alfonso el Sabio
   1221-1284

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up
to them.
-- Alfred Adler

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many
precautions.
-- Alfred Adler

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat.  Cut it.
-- Alfred Hitchcock

The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot
perform.
-- Alfred Kinsey

There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe
everything or to doubt everything.  Both ways save us from
thinking.
-- Alfred Korzybski

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for
ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its
song, and the sun for its radiance.  The poets are entirely
mistaken.  They should address their lyrics to themselves and
should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the
excellence of the human mind.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

The human body is an instrument for the production of art in
the life of the human soul.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here
by me.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Send us to battle, send us to the front lines/ Point us at
the enemy, lest we forget:/ It's for our protection that we
lay here slaughtered,/ It's for our survival we bury our
dead.
-- Alison Moyet
   "Money Mile"

We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaged in an
activity that is anything but debilitating, dangerous,
euphoric, kinesthetic, expensive, frivolously essential,
economically useless and totally without redeeming social
significance.  One should not probe for deeper meanings.
-- Allen Steck

Mornings are for sleeping during.
-- Amanda Walker

Having to make $100K to afford a nice place to live (without
commuting for an hour or so each way) is obscene.
-- Amanda Walker

We are not *just* baboons.  There is a quality which in
humans takes the gamut of primate behavior and expands it
almost beyond recognition.  That quality is consciousness.
Whether you think of it as an epiphenomenon of the neocortex
and the reticular activation system, a spark of divine fire,
or even both simultaneously :), the fact remains that genus
homo represents a radical departure from the other primates
and the rest of the animal kingdom.

That quality of consciousness allows, and even encourages,
us to do things which no other creature on Earth can do.  It
allows us to plan; to consciously develop specific skills;
to override "instinctual" reactions and reflexes, and
reprogram our behavior patterns.  It allows us to act even
though it hurts, or frightens us, or makes us angry.  It
allows us to go beyond the immediately apparent results of
our actions, and to do things which require being able to
model ourselves and the world around us.  It allows us to
coordinate our efforts on a vast scale.

It is this very effectiveness of action and scale of purpose
that demarcates humans from the the rest of the animals on
this planet.  There can be no baboon Hitler.  There can be
no baboon Christ, or Buddha.  There is no chimpanzee
Aleister Crowley.  The whales do not gather together to
revive barren seascapes.

We are not separate from the world around us, but we have a
unique place in it, just as everything else does.  The
baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees are our cousins, and the
rest of creation is our family, but we are not anonymous
among them.  We have the capacity to act (both effectively
and disastrously) on scales and timeframes that no other
creatures can even approach.  To them, we have as much in
common with the forces of nature itself (such as the
weather, forest fires, etc.) as we do with them.
-- Amanda Walker

It's much easier to see barriers than the absence of them.
You don't notice things that aren't there, such as:
. not being felt up during a professional conversation
. not getting wolf whistles when you walk past a construction
  site.
. not being asked why you're looking at the expensive technical
  equipment instead of the "easy to use" stuff.
. not being told "you really wouldn't be interested in math."
. not hearing remarks about "stupid women drivers" when you
  take your car into a body shop.
. not being afraid of getting beaten into a pulp as you walk
  from a gay bar to your car.
. not having your car vandalised because of the rainbow flag
  on your bumper.
. not being offered a job because a manager is too freaked by
  his own misconceptions to be able to even consider working
  with you.
. not being told "nothing personal, but you're making other
  people uncomfortable."
. not being offered a lower salary because "you don't need
  as much."
And so on.  It's hard to see absence of something as an
advantage until you have to deal with its presence.
-- Amanda Walker

The commercial availability of software to check spelling,
grammar, and style does serve quite well as a form of
stupidity tax.
-- Amanda Walker

Each bigotry has its own "feel," but they all boil down to
fear, and anger at being afraid.
-- Amanda Walker

I think of xenophobia as a *symptom* of the root of all
evil, which I think is ignorance.  Willful ignorance is
stupidity, and coercive ignorance is evil.
-- Amanda Walker

Wearing boiled leather, chainmail or plate armor, a helm,
and a broadsword does bring new meaning to the term "butch."
-- Amanda Walker

Politics: strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Heaven, n.: A place where the wicked cease from troubling
you with talk of their own personal affairs, and the good
listen with attention while you expound your own.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Accuracy: The vice of being right.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Conservative: a statesman who is enamored of existing evils,
as distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to replace them
with others.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they
are, not as they ought to be.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Learning: the kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Optimism: The doctrine or belief that everything is
beautiful, including what is ugly. 
-- Ambrose Bierce

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who
speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be
betrayed.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper,
our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and
good fortune to others.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Duty: That which sternly impels us in the direction of
profit, along the line of desire.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent
with one's own opinion
-- Ambrose Bierce

Consult: To seek another's approval of a course already
decided on.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance
to ourselves.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Alliance:  In international politics, the union of two
thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each
other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a
third. 
-- Ambrose Bierce

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a
divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual
need of his neighbor.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal
advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine
which side it is buttered on.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse
for failure.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself
than me. 
-- Ambrose Bierce

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is
worth while.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the
human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite,
which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Politician: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the
superstructure of organized society is reared.  When he
wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the
trembling of the edifice.  As compared with the statesman,
he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Saint:  A dead sinner revised and edited.
-- Ambrose Bierce

There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of
old things we don't know yet.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but
absence of body is better.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Breakfast is the most important meal of the afternoon.
-- Amelia T. Smith

The acceptable response to homosexuality is not "It's OK,
it's not your choice," or, even, "It's OK, it *is* your
choice," but rather, "So?"
-- Amy Gorin

A Homosexual Couple.  An openly professed homosexual couple
should be considered a social entity and be invited to
social functions on one invitation.  Their names would be
listed alphabetically on separate lines.
-- Amy Vanderbilt

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
-- Anais Nin

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
-- Anais Nin

The business of the mind is first and foremost the pure joy
of knowing and comprehending, the pure joy of consciousness.
-- Anais Nin

This book is dedicated to sensitive Americans.  May they
create a sensitive America.
-- Anais Nin
   dedication to "The Novel of the Future"

Let us pay each other the compliment of not lying to each
other.
-- Anais Nin

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on
conjecture.
-- Anatole France

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
-- Anatole France

It is his reasonable conversation which mostly frightens us
in a madman.
-- Anatole France

The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his
soul among masterpieces.
-- Anatole France

The average man, who does not know what to do with his
life, wants another one which will last forever.
-- Anatole France

The law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich as
well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the
streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who
find it.
-- Andre Gide

It is better to be hated for what one is than loved for what
one is not.
-- Andre Gide

I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity,
defiance.
-- Andre Gide

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose
sight of the shore for a very long time.
-- Andre Gide

Without feeling there's no reason to live.
-- Andre Kertesz
   1894-1985

Men love death.  In everything they make, they hollow out a
central place for death, let its rancid smell contaminate
every dimension of whatever still survives.  Men especially
love murder.  In art they celebrate it and in life they
commit it.
-- Andrea Dworkin

When it comes to exploring the sea of love, I prefer buoys.
-- Andrew G. Dehel

The modern concept of "homosexuality," as a general sexual
(and affectional) preference for one's own gender, was
invented last century.  It has been a remarkably successful
invention and has revolutionized the way we consider the
sexual side of our lives.
-- Andrew Gollan

People won't let you live the way you want to, but if you're
strong enough or quick enough, at least you don't have to
live the way they want you to.
-- Andrew H. Vachss
   Burke, from "Flood" 

Is life an illusion?  Or does it just seem that way?
-- Andrew Lawson

Don't ask "why," unless you're not disappointed with answers
like "I don't know."
-- Andrew Walenstein

God was able to create the world in only seven days because
he had no installed base to consider.
-- Andy Finkel
   Commodore-Amiga Inc.

[Of four students at VU Amsterdam who won 2nd Place in the
1991 ACM Programming Contest:] Three cheers for them all:
001, 010, 011!
-- Andy Tanenbaum

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of
them to choose from.
-- Andy Tanenbaum

The UNIX system has a command, 'nice', which allows a user
to voluntarily reduce the priority of his process, in order
to be nice to other users.  Nobody ever uses it.
-- Andy Tanenbaum

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the
road.  They get run over. 
-- Aneurin Bevan

If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you
in the night.
-- Angela Davis

Space is (a) something containing nothing;
(b) nothing containing everything.
-- Angelo de Haberdasheri

I have a difficult time dealing with your anger, my friend,
when I have done something to hurt you.  I am afraid to
trust that when your anger is gone you will still love me.
But when I know what I have done I can modify my behavior,
or apologize, or explain.  And, then I hope that we can be
reconciled.  But I am terrified when I am included in your
anger but I cannot pinpoint the cause within myself.  I am
afraid that this anger will be between us forever, and I
feel helpless and vulnerable because I can find nothing to
do about it.
-- Ann Carlson

Family values mean a lot to me, good things, and I don't
like to see the term slandered.
-- Ann Carlson

If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
-- Ann Edwards-Duff

The best way to find something you've lost is to buy a
replacement.
-- Ann Landers

We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
-- Ann Marion

Some say that US military actions under Reagan to protect
the flow of cheaper-than-Texan Mid-East oil don't constitute
an overseas "subsidy."  Well you can put lipstick on a hog,
and call it "Monique," but it's still a pig.
-- Ann Richards
   Governor of Texas

Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of
bad training.
-- Anna Freud

I still believe that people are really good at heart.  I
simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of
confusion, misery and death.
-- Anne Frank

Television: the bland leading the bland. 
-- (Anonymous)

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
-- (Anonymous)

If you see someone standing on top of a mountain, it isn't
because they fell up there.
-- (Anonymous)

There are no ordinary moments.
-- (Anonymous)

To change, I must understand that giving up is not giving
in, nor is it failing.  It is no longer needing to be right.
-- (Anonymous)

Most children grow up to be adults in spite of their
parents, not because of them.
-- (Anonymous)

The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that you are
working for someone else.
-- (Anonymous)

Blood is thicker than water and much tastier.
-- (Anonymous)

The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the
stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.
-- (Anonymous)

Doctors bury their mistakes.  Lawyers hang them.
Journalists put theirs on the front page.
-- (Anonymous)

The mission of a modern newspaper is to comfort the
afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
-- (Anonymous)

Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.
-- (Anonymous)

When you don't have an education, you've got to use your
brains.
-- (Anonymous)

A stitch in time would have confused Einstein.
-- (Anonymous)

Things could be worse.  Suppose your errors were counted
and published every day, like those of a baseball player.
-- (Anonymous)

The probability of someone watching you is proportional to
the stupidity of your action.
-- (Anonymous)

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
-- (Anonymous)

A lecture is where the notes of the professor become the
notes of the student without passing through the mind of
either one.
-- (Anonymous)

Aging is bad, but consider the alternative. 
-- (Anonymous)

Inferiority complex: a conviction by a jury of your fears. 
-- (Anonymous)

Neurotic: Self-taut person. 
-- (Anonymous)

Rage is a wind that blows out the candle of reason.
-- (Anonymous)

BASIC silently prevents you from tying your shoelaces
together.  Pascal says, "You can't tie your shoelaces
together." C says, "Hmm, this person wants to tie his
shoelaces together.  Okay."
-- (Anonymous)

Virtue is its own punishment.
-- (Anonymous)

If you wouldn't do it with an HIV+ person, consider not
doing it at all!
-- Anthony Berno

Quite frankly, the reason that I would never release source
code is that it is just too embarrassing!  Letting someone
see source is sort of like letting someone see your
underwear.  No matter how clean it is, it's always going to
seem a bit dirty to the owner.
-- Anthony Berno

A fag is... a big ugly hairy woman with a penis.
-- (unknown nitwit)
Egad!  Call Artimus Page!  I'm heterosexual after all!  I
never wanted men, all I wanted was a big hairy woman with a
penis!!!!  Now that I have shed this terrible homosex
disease, I can live a happy, fulfilling, AIDS-free life with
my hairy penised woman.  We will have sex only in the
missionary position, and go to church every Sunday.  We will
eat Wonder bread and twinkies.  Oh, life is fine indeed when
one is normal.  Perhaps, though, she should change her name.
"John" just isn't a womanly appellation.
-- Anthony Berno

Being oppressed does not make one any more virtuous than one
would be otherwise.  Even knowing the taste of oppression
oneself does not prevent the mechanisms whereby "enemies"
are dehumanized so that the concept of oppression seems to
no longer apply to them.  (To what degree such accusations
of oppression by the oppressed are themselves engineered by
the oppressors is another question, a very complicated one
at that.)
-- Anthony Berno

The formerly and currently oppressed are by far the greatest
driving force behind ending oppression for everyone.  While
racism and sexism are rampant among the gay community, gays
and lesbians are also leaders in the battle against these
same forces.  This is by no means a contradiction, of course;
we all know that the gay community is far from homogeneous,
and we should not expect any group to consist entirely of
saints or villains.
-- Anthony Berno

Might I go so far as to argue that being oppressed often
*leads* to bigotry?  If someone is raised in an environment
of blatant oppression, where there is always a clearly
defined "us" and "them", it becomes very difficult to learn
to be tolerant.  If oppression is all one knows, it can
become the only thing one knows how to do oneself.
-- Anthony Berno

I'm reluctant to give particular examples of this [being
oppressive when oppression is all one knows], because the
examples I can give are, by their very nature, highly
politically charged.  But a few come to mind, like misogyny
in the gay community, misandry among lesbians, gang justice
among black South Africans, the treatment of perceived
counterrevolutionaries among guerillas in El Salvador, etc.
-- Anthony Berno

Why aren't there any gay-nerd-bear bars, anyway?  Ones where
bear programmers network their computers through glory holes
and exchange filthy email?  Now, there's a market!
-- Anthony Berno

The things we value in our lives are not valuable for their
permanence, but for their ability to give us pleasure for
today and experience for tomorrow.
-- Anthony Berno

Every loss has as a necessary prerequisite the possession of
something wonderful.  The possession of something wonderful
has as an inevitable consequence its loss.  If you don't
have loss, you have nothing.
-- Anthony Berno

Courting Catholics is like trying to put out a fire with an
eyedropper.  Sometimes, you have to let the fire burn a
while, even make it worse, while you run up the river to
break the dam.
-- Anthony Berno

Everyone is always in favor of general economy and
particular expenditure.
-- Anthony Eden

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being
intelligible.
-- Anthony Hope Hawkins

There are many people who believe that this disease is God's
vengeance, but I believe it was sent to teach people how to
love and understand and have compassion.  I have learned
more about love, selflessness and human understanding from
the people I have met in this great adventure in the world
of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world
in which I spent my life.
-- Anthony Perkins

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking
outward together in the same direction.
-- Antoine de St.-Exupery

One cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit
statements and crossword puzzles.  That is impossible.  Nor
can one exist for any length of time without poetry, without
color, without love.
-- Antoine de St.-Exupery

Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything
to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
-- Antoine de St.-Exupery

On ne voit q'avec le coeur, d'essentiel est invisible pour
les yeux.
-- Antoine de St.-Exupery

Any idiot can face a crisis.  It's the day-to-day living
that wears you out.
-- Anton Chekhov

"Truth" never set anyone free.  It is only *doubt* which
will bring mental emancipation.
-- Anton LaVey

If you do not raise your eyes you will think you are the
highest point.
-- Antonio Porchia
   "Voces," 1968

The fox knows many things -- the hedgehog one *big* one.
-- Archilochus

Melancholy men, of all others, are the most witty. 
-- Aristotle

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a
thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a
slow-ripening fruit.
-- Aristotle

Nature does nothing uselessly. 
-- Aristotle

Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
-- Aristotle

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable
possibilities.
-- Aristotle

Even God cannot change the past.
-- Aristotle
   "Nicomachean Ethics"

What is a friend?  A single soul dwelling in two bodies. 
-- Aristotle

Philosophy's all right, when you have a house to think about
it in.
-- Arlo Guthrie

Lord, that's so simple.  If you hate your job, quit it.  If
your friends are tedious, go out and find new ones.  You are
*queer*, you lucky fool, and that makes you one of life's
buccaneers, free from the clutter of 2,000 years of
Judeo-Christian sermonizing.  Stop feeling sorry for
yourself and start hoisting your sails.  You haven't a
moment to lose.
-- Armistead Maupin
   "Advocate,"  January 8, 1985.

Speaking of gastronomy, have I ever served you that meal for
40 guests, _Spam in Allium_?
-- Steve Dyer
No.  Tallis about it.
-- Arne Adolfsen

I think it highly unlikely that the sight of Madonna
jiggling around in a parking garage singing "Borderline"
will strike people 50 years hence with the same force that
people are struck with even today when they see Dietrich in
a tuxedo kissing a woman full on the lips in the 62-year old
"Morocco".
-- Arne Adolfsen

You've never seen a slutty outfit until you've seen Jane
Russell's big showgirl outfit in "The French Line." It makes
Madonna's cone-tit outfit look like something from off the
rack in the Cheryl Tiegs boutique at Sears.
-- Arne Adolfsen

Keep in mind that a talent for camp cannot be learned -- you
either have it, or you've had it.
-- Arne Adolfsen

My one question now is: what's HWP?  The phrase turns up in
a lot of the ads.
-- George Reilly
Happy When Porked?  Hot Wax Pig?  Handy With Pliers?
Habitually Whining Princess?
-- Arne Adolfsen

It seems to me that the people who are fighting amongst
themselves to get into position to lick Perot's billion
dollar asshole are the same people who've spent the last 10+
years responding to corporate America's great "we" campaign.
US magazine, USA Today, Newsweek's and Time's and now the NY
Times' "*We* think that X is Y", Good Morning America, Rock
Star Benefits to Feed the Hungry/ Stop Global Warming/Save
Family Farms/End Racism/Whatever, "We Are the World", blah
blah blah blah.  This is not a real "we", which would imply
an individual commitment to, or a self-identification with,
a collective; rather, it's a packaged-commodity "we." Don't
presume to speak for *us* unless you know who *we* are.
-- Arne Adolfsen

Oh yes, the sentimentality for "unborn babies," but apparent
lack of concern for "born babies." What are you once you
*are* born?  Pre-dead?
-- Arne Adolfsen

Should I do something about the way I feel, or just follow
along with everyone else?  I'm a research engineer.
-- Lawrence Clarke
A motsseur who's currently without net access suggested the
perfect solution to your problem: next year, why don't you
march in Omaha's parade with a slide rule pinned to your
sweater?
-- Arne Adolfsen

I think Ketelby gives Delius a run for his money.
-- Arne Adolfsen

I dislike Lillian Hellman because she was a grandstanding,
opportunistic plagiarist and self-mythologizer whose writing
is just barely competent.  I *do* have an aversion to the
kind of thinking that equates popular success with artistic
value.  Lillian Hellman, that old fraud, was terribly
successful in marketing her shabby wares.  That does not
make her an artist.
-- Arne Adolfsen

Are you perhaps under the misapprehension that I intended to
be fair about this?
-- Arne Adolfsen

Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of
hope.
-- Arnold Glasow

Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage,
not a harbor.
-- Arnold Toynbee

Always wear gloves to a restaurant, to the theatre, when you
go to lunch, or to a formal dinner, or to a dance.  Always
take them off when you eat.  The question of length and
color is one of transient fashion and personal taste.
-- Emily Post
Go back and read that sentence; take its lesson to heart.
-- Arnold Zwicky

Labeling something as sarcasm utterly undercuts the effect.
The whole point about sarcasm is that it's risky; it depends
on your hearer getting the literal meaning and then seeing
that you can't mean *that* so you must mean something else
and working out what that other thing must be.  Your hearer
has to do some interpretive work, and that work *is* the
effect.
-- Arnold Zwicky

Epithets like "breeder" and "cocksucker" really aren't
parallel, and can't be.  An epithet like "cocksucker" arises
from the *contempt* of one group for those in a stigmatized
and/or marginalized group; such words are commonly used as
instruments of social control, to warn people away from the
behaviors of the marginalized group (I'm sure that strayt
boyz use "cocksucker" much much more often to one another,
as part of what I think of as "masculinity practice." than
they do to actual cocksuckers like me), as well as to throw
up a wall of fear and hate between themselves and the
(largely unknown and therefore potentially dangerous, deeply
different and therefore contaminated) marginalized group.

"Breeder" doesn't work like that at all.  There is fear in
there -- fear with a real-life, adrenalin-pumping basis --
and as a result some hate, too, but the central emotion is
*rage*, rage like that of a dog directed, after long and
bitter experience, against the person who beats it savagely.
-- Arnold Zwicky

Looks like, if you want a half-decent pun filter you need
one that can do just about everything except wash glitches
and cool the common clod.
-- Arnold Zwicky

Just about all real intellectual activity starts from the
understanding that *there is a problem here*, especially in
things we take for granted.
-- Arnold Zwicky

There is a very big world outside this newsgroup
[soc.motss], and most of it is inimical enough to satisfy
anybody's needs for combat.  In any case, there is
alt.politics.homosexuality, which really truly was created
for (among other things) the airing of opinions about
gayfolk.  (Yes, it's an unpleasant place, but then the
opinions in question are on the whole lamentable, so what do
you expect?  If the outhouse smells, do you then decide to
shit in the kitchen, where it's nicer?)
-- Arnold Zwicky

A real conversation passes back and forth among many
participants, and its course is like the meander of a river.
There is no guiding hand.  People join and leave, as their
lives and their passions allow; the river constantly changes
its course.
-- Arnold Zwicky

[Of insults among friends:]
But I'd do this in e-mail only; no matter how i framed it in
a posting, there would always be some oxygen-breathing
rutabagas who read this group who would take it entirely the
wrong way.
-- Arnold Zwicky

Pat Buchanan as a keynote speaker?  Pat Buchanan??  I guess
the Republicans had to settle for Buchanan because they
couldn't get the speaker they really wanted.  Monday must be
Satan's bowling night.
-- Arsenio Hall

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival
value.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not
wave in a vacuum.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my
attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the
night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That
was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've
solved it.
-- Arthur Kasspe

The flashlight, seeing light in every direction it looks,
concludes there is light everywhere.
-- Arthur Koestler

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but
originality, the opening of new frontiers.
-- Arthur Koestler

An era can be said to end when its illusions are
exhausted. 
-- Arthur Miller

Data is a lot like humans: It is born.  Matures.  Gets
married to other data, divorced.  Gets old.  One thing that
it doesn't do is die.  It has to be killed.
-- Arthur Miller

Most people ask for happiness on condition.  Happiness can
only be felt if you don't set any conditions.
-- Artur Rubinstein

We create a leader by locating one in the crowd who is
standing up.  We designate this victim as a 'stand-up guy'
by the simple expedient of sitting down around him.
-- Arturo Binewski

I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the
problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call
whatever you hit the target.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

"The Good Book" -- one of the most remarkable euphemisms
ever coined.
-- Ashley Montagu

It is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.  And
there are so many silences to be broken.
-- Audre Lorde

Being called a poetess brings out the terroristress in me.
-- Audre Lorde

I loathe people who keep dogs.  They are cowards who haven't
got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg

Universities have created all our miseries.  Universities do
more damage than cluster bombs.
-- Ayatollah Khomeini

An apple every eight hours keeps three doctors away.
-- B. Kliban

When told he was making more per year than the President,
Babe Ruth replied, "Well, I had a better year than he did."
-- Babe Ruth

O Son of Man!  Veiled in my immemorial being and in the
ancient eternity of Mine essence, I knew My love for thee;
therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image
and revealed to thee My beauty.
-- Baha'u'llah

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of
moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal, or knowingly
spread a venereal disease.  Never speed up to hit a
pedestrian or, of course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has
already been hit.  From which it followed, of course, that
one would never, ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of
Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.
-- Barbara Ehrenreich
   "Automating Politics"

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I do wonder about
people who waste time, in a world needing more love,
worrying about the gender of who it is I happen to love.
And when they act on their beliefs to try and trample our
civil rights ...  religious fervor in the expression of
bigotry is no piety.
-- Barry Archer

If you would preserve peace, then prepare for peace.
-- Barthelemy Enfantin

"The man in the wilderness said to me,/ 'How many
strawberries grow in the sea?'/ I answered him as I thought
good --/ 'As many red herrings as grow in the wood.'"
-- Beatrix Potter

How can I worry about your miserable violin when I am
speaking to my God?
-- Beethoven

Competitions are for horses, not artists.
-- Bela Bartok

Confound these ancestors.  They've stolen our best ideas!
-- Ben Jonson

There has been opposition to every innovation in the
history of man, with the possible exception of the sword.
-- Benjamin Dana

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no
happiness without action.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with
me.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

Nothing ever perplexes an adversary so much as an appeal to
his honor.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

I must follow the people.  Am I not their leader?
-- Benjamin Disraeli

If you are not very clever you should be conciliatory.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect
generally happens.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

All would live long, but none would be old.
-- Benjamin Franklin

There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
-- Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty not safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will
probably tell you.  Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is
all.
-- Bernard Levin
   "Daily Mail," 1964

I am free, no matter what rules surround me.  If I find them
tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I
break them.  I am free because I know that I alone am
morally responsible for everything I do.
-- Bernardo de la Paz

To be modest is to understand oneself as being capable of
all men's weaknesses.
-- Bernard of Clairvaux

Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral.
-- Bertold Brecht
   "Dreigroschenoper"

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up
a bank clerk.
-- Bertold Brecht

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics
are always so sure of themselves but wiser people are full
of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russell

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by
education.
-- Bertrand Russell

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for
trivial reasons.
-- Bertrand Russell

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to
find out, which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell

We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face.
We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is
not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better
than what these others have made it in all these ages.  A
good world needs knowledge, kindliness and courage; it does
not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a
fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long
ago by ignorant men.  It needs a fearless outlook and a free
intelligence.  It needs hope for the future, not looking back
all the time towards a past that is dead which we trust will
be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can
create.
-- Bertrand Russell

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to
avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything beyond
this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
-- Bertrand Russell

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence
that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the
silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is
more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
-- Bertrand Russell
   "Marriage and Morals" (1929)

It has been said that man is a rational animal.  All my life
I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell

As far as I can remember, there is not one word in the
Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a
delight to moralists.
-- Bertrand Russell

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our
intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and
science as our guidelines.
-- Bertrand Russell

Some would sooner die than think.  In fact, they often do. 
-- Bertrand Russell

The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is have a
baby in a stable by an unknown father.
-- Bette Midler

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if
you don't try.
-- Beverly Sills

The constant man does not lose his courage in misfortune.  A
torch may point toward the ground, but its flame will soar
upwards.
-- Bhartrihari

The Lord is a man of war. 
-- Bible
   Exodus 15:3

The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in
darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event
happeneth to them all.  Then said I in my heart, As it
happeneth to the fool so it happeneth even to me; and why
was I then more wise?  Then I said in my heart, that this is
also vanity.  For there is no remembrance of the wise more
than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the
days to come shall all be forgotten.  And how dieth the wise
man?  As the fool.
-- Bible
   Ecclesiastes 2:14-16

As of this date I have not qoated one thing that Perot has
said or done, because I can not back it up yet.  I will,
when I bring up particular issues, qoate my sources so
others may read if they wish.
-- Bil Snodgrass

The experience of programming Windows vs the experience of
programming NeXTStep is like going to the dentist and having
a root canal without anaesthetic vs going to the dentist and
having your gums cleaned with some nitrous oxide thrown in
for the entertainment side of things.
-- Bill Bumgarner

Our families *have* values, but our government doesn't.
-- Bill Clinton
   Democratic National Convention, 1992

Recession: your friend loses his job.  Depression: you lose
your job.  Recovery: Bush loses his job.
-- Bill Davidsen

I don't worry about safely using my hp calculator or yacc,
or the ruler and pencil on my desk.  Why should we *accept*
the attitude that it is ok to *need* to worry about safely
using the rest of our tools.  Today there is a legitimate
saftey issue for computer users that we should all be aware
of.  The answer is not acceptance of a necessary amount of
paranoia.
-- Bill Mangione-Smith

The Vice Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the
plate.  Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody
always does.
-- Bill Vaughan

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for
democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national
election.
-- Bill Vaughan

I defy anyone to propose a situation where it would work.
If you could, it would seriously weaken the rationale behind
the ban, but as it is the whole thing is just a shouting
match.
-- Matt Freivald
There is no rationale behind the ban.  One cannot weaken
what never existed in the first place.
-- Billy Green

Now that it is increasingly clear that HIV can be
transmitted to heterosexuals ...  the self-righteous must
find another reason for gay-bashing.
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu

The nearer the Church the further from God.
-- Bishop Lancelot Andrewes
   1555-1626

C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot.  C++
makes that harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole
leg.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

The [whites] did not care for each other the way our people
did.  ...  They would take everything from each other they
could.  ...  They had forgotten the earth was their mother.
...  [They] even had the grass penned up.
-- Black Elk

Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
-- Blair Houghton

The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.
-- Blaise Pascal

On admiration: No animal admires another animal.
-- Blaise Pascal

Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to
sit still in a room. 
-- Blaise Pascal

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to
put first.
-- Blaise Pascal

Things are always at their best in the beginning.
-- Blaise Pascal

No jesus, know peace.  Know jesus, no peace.
-- Bob Beauchaine

Mapplethorpe is dead and he can still piss off Helms.  That
makes him, like, some kind of hero in my book.
-- Bob Goldthwaite

"I have AIDS.  I could be an African-American woman, a
Latino man, a 10-year-old boy or girl.  AIDS has many faces.
And AIDS knows no class or gender, race or religion, or
sexual orientation.  AIDS does not discriminate.  But George
Bush's White House does."
-- Bob Hattoy
   at the Democratic National Convention, 1992

It all depends on what is more important to you: the right
to act in a bizarre fashion, or political progress & social
acceptance.
-- Bob Sarver
The fallacy of the false dilemma occurs when only two
alternatives of many are presented as choices in an
argument.  Sarver, a hitherto unknown philosophical talent,
has refined the art of false dilemma.  The new and exciting
development he adds to the prior art is the presentation of
*the same thing* as though it were two distinct choices in
an argument.  As yet, no practical use has been found for
this rhetorical device, but certain parties from Houston are
considering the funding of further investigations.
-- Bob Lodenkamper

Many times one is asked to "listen" to the same dusty old
set of lies, factual errors, hate and stupidity that some
fool thinks is an acceptable ethical system.  Why bother?
Believe me, it gets old real fast.
-- Bob Lodenkamper

I write as one who spent far too much energy devoted to
fantasy wish fulfillment scenarios of painful death to my
enemies, and can say for certain that indulging in these
fantasies did no harm to my enemies, and a great deal of
harm to myself.
-- Bob Lodenkamper

There is such a thing as making an argument appropriate for
the intended audience.  Just as one doesn't expect a third
grader to follow Kant, one doesn't bother crafting witty
replies to idiocy.  It's a waste of time, and annoys the
idiot.
-- Bob Lodenkamper

Many topics summarily dismissed as "idiocy" here have been
brought up on a regular basis for far too long by a
seemingly endless succession of half-wits who think their
feculant pearls of wisdom are somehow new, and deserving of
a carefully crafted response.
-- Bob Lodenkamper

Let us spread the idea of tolerance by practicing it
ourselves, even toward bigots.
-- Lee Crocker
They want to defeat us politically as a prelude to
exterminating us.  We need to defeat them politically in
order to survive.  This is why equating our intolerance for
their attitudes with their intolerance of us and our
attitudes is stupid.  They simply do not compare.
-- Bob Lodenkamper

Everybody wants to do the horizontal bop. 
-- Bob Seger

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
-- Booker T. Washington

My work is an alternative to the gay liberation movement and
to the gay press.  The gay press has to be sexless because
they are public.  And in order to be publicly gay they have
to be closet homosexuals.  My books are all about
homosexuality rather than gayness.  In other words, gay is
what they are in public, and homosexual is what they are in
private.  My books are all about their private lives.  It has
nothing to do with gay liberation, gay rights, gays in the
military, civil rights, fundraising, political candidates,
and all that stuff.  If you're going to be a lobbyist or
lawyer running a fundraising campaign, you cannot be sexual.
It is a necessity that the whole gay liberation movement had
to give up sex in order to go public as gay.  They had to
give up homosexuality in public, but they still are secretly
homosexual.
-- Boyd McDonald

But I wouldn't try to please the stupid people.  That's what
some homosexuals think we should try to do.  It won't work
because the bigotry comes not from the behavior of the
minority but from the mind of the bigot.  A sexually
inadequate person like Patrick Buchanan has a need within
himself to have this attitude toward homosexuality.  His
attitude is not based on observation of homosexuals.  It
comes from within himself.  It's the same as anti-Semitism.
The _New_York_Times_ is a Jewish paper, and it is extremely
respectful.  But an anti-Semite is going to say, well these
are just rich Park Avenue Jews.  He is not going to draw his
observation based on the behavior of the _Times_; it's going
to come from within himself.  He has a need to be
anti-Semitic.  You can't please these people.
-- Boyd McDonald

Contrary to their reputations, the real hot homosexuals who
have sex in toilets and so forth are simply nicer people and
more concerned, more caring, move loving, more affectionate,
and friendlier than the prudes.  The prudes pretend that
they are the ones who are decent, and the ones in the
toilets are indecent, but it's just the other way around.
Prudes are mean, and they have a huge deficit in their
lives.
-- Boyd McDonald

Unix is like sex.  If you haven't had it yet, you don't
understand what all the fuss is about.  Once you've had it,
it's hard to live without.
-- Brad Morrison

I don't know if one ever fully gets used to or accepts their
sexuality.  Hets smugly think they do, but only because they
haven't ever thought to question it -- but for queers, there
always is a time where one deals with what they are.
-- Brad Shapcott

Communist    (CAHM-ee) n. 1. Member of the Communist Party.
		2. A legendary boogeyman appearing only in
	fundraising letters.  Any actual  resemblance
	between (1) and (2) is purely coincidental.
	See Red.
Pinko        (PINK-oh) n. 1. An all-purpose innuendo used to
	imply that your  opponent may be a homosexual when
	you don't have any actual evidence and don't want
	to be sued for libel, in which case you can maintain
	that, really, pink is just a shade of red, honest.
	See the pyramids along the Nile.
Sympathizer  (CAHM-ee-SIMP) n. 1. Your opponent in any election.
	See Stooge.
Tinkerbell   (TINK-er-bell) n. 1. A cutesy way of calling someone
	homosexual  without sounding too harsh or making your
	meaning clear enough to be sued for libel.  See Nancy
	Boy, limp wristed, mince.
-- Brent Capps

If you want to fight discrimination, you must first make the
injustice visible.
-- Brent Capps

This should not be accomplished by holding the stereotype
homosexuals down, but rather by working with the gray
masses.
-- Baard Kjos
I agree.  We stereotypes shouldn't be held down.  We
should be securely *tied* down.  Gray is quite a nice accent
to black leather, too.
-- Brent Capps

I haven't engaged in any sexual activity with anyone in
over a year.  Am I no longer gay?
-- Arne Adolfsen
No, I'm afraid you've been downgraded to amusing.
-- Brent Capps

I thought leather *was* sort of like church.  I worship it
on my knees...
-- Brent Capps

Male "banana"'s ass is valued high by white gay men.  The
reason for that are two folds.
-- (some bigot on soc.culture.china) 
Hateful diatribe.  *Wonderful* malaprop.
-- Brent Davies

I am SICK--incurably SICK--of listening, listening,
listening to homophobes-- both strayt and *not*, mind you,
since (as we know) closeted 'phobes can be especially
vicious--telling me over and over again in endlessly
inventive ways how *bad* I am, how *unworthy* I am, how
*immoral* I am, how *unsuited* I am, how *unrealistic* I'm
being, how *much* I'm expecting, how *little* I'm giving,
how *disgusting* I am, how *sinful* I am.  And I--yes,
*I*--so sorry to be selfish here--get *nowhere* as far as my
personal rights go.  So I'm through with passive listening
as a sole strategy, it's just that simple.  Sure I'll
listen.  But this time around, the fists are up too;
listening is now something I reserve exclusively for nice
people, and Perot does NOT strike me as one.
-- Brent Davies

So: you act however you want to.  There is no "gay" way to
act.  Don't let the old stereotypes fool you: we're as
diverse as the stars.
-- Brent Davies

The reality is, gay people's behavior is a *continuum* with
an infinite number of varieties, as many as there are gay
people.  Somewhere in that continuum is you.  And only *you*
can say where that is.
-- Brent Davies

You don't look like a fag.
Funny, neither do you.
-- Brett Manz

I look at it this way: there's a whole lot of children out
there without parents.  And a whole lot of gay and lesbian
people/couples who aren't too likely to have children.  This
seems like a marvelous opportunity to empty the orphanages
and fill some lives.
-- Brett Manz

You can't be proud of who you are if you're ashamed of what
you are.
-- Brett Manz

My opinions are my own.  The truth belongs to everyone.
-- Brett Manz

Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle
and will piss on your computer.
-- Brian Gollum

An early lesson in life: take control, not shit.
-- Brian Jarvis

When someone mentions "the City" in my presence, I usually
interpret it to mean exciting Charlton, Ontario (pop.  200,
including cows).  Anyone who uses expressions so vague
deserves to be misinterpreted on a biblical scale.
-- Brian Jarvis

It says a lot about the US, when they ban lawn darts but you
can still buy semi-automatic weapons in a department store.
-- Brian Manz

When gay and lesbian workers can't work safely, they can't
work at optimum productivity.  Eliminating homophobia from
the workplace profits everyone.  Educational effort such as
this are critically important first steps.
-- Brian McNaught
   Consultant and Trainer AT&T, Bell Labs

The legitimacy of homosexuality lies not in its loyalty to
orthodox masculinity, but in its violation.
-- Brian Pronger

Sometimes I wish I had a knob to turn up the intelligence on
the Internet.  I have one on my monitor marked brightness,
but it doesn't seem to work very well, does it?
-- Bryan Manske

We do not have an anti-gay policy....  The problems Boy
Scouts are having are with people trying to get in: the gay
community, the homosexuals, the atheists.
-- Burford Hill
   western regional director for the Boy Scouts of America.

Isn't atheism a religion of sorts?  A belief *about* a
supreme being or metaphysical something-or-other.
-- Douglas R Hellmann
Is celibacy a sexual practice?  If so, how does a celibate
know when he's having sex?
-- C.D. Tavares

Some people have said that it was a homophobic
administration.  I think that's a bad word.  Homophobia
has the connotation of being fearful.  This wasn't fear,
it was hatred.
-- C. Everett Koop


One gift of birthdays is that the older we get, the more
younger there are of sizable age.
-- C.F. Borgman
   "River Road"

And now, what will become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
-- C.P. Cavafy   

You wouldn't know a good time if it stripped naked, hopped
on your face, and started wiggling!
-- C. Stanley

Acting Gay?  How can one act gay?  We are gay.
-- Cable King

Domini caveat e smilium, diem e smilium, Corpus Christi e
smilium.
-- Caesar
   proposing a ban on the use of smileys on Rome's
   "usenet", ca. 40 A.D.

The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain.
-- Cal Keegan

All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen
happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority
for themselves.
-- Carl Jung

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
-- Carl Jung

The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.
-- Carl Jung

Erotica is stuff that's meant to be read with one hand.
-- Carl Manz

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first
create the universe.
-- Carl Sagan

All of the books in the world contain no more information
than is broadcast as video in a single large American city
in a single year.  Not all bits have equal value.
-- Carl Sagan

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
-- Carl Sandburg

I like having a machine called 'elvis' on the network
because that way, I can say 'ping elvis' and have it come
back with 'elvis is alive'.
-- Carl Shipley

The world is made up of *too many* insensitive, malicious
people unworthy of my attention who by their every word and
action declare themselves an enemy of who and what I
am...and these people make decisions that affect my life.
Fortunately, I have developed the self-confidence and
strength to withstand these things or I wouldn't be here
today...but I'm *still pissed*, and I have every *right* to
that anger.
-- Carleton Cornish

For an instant I think I *saw*.  I *saw* the loneliness of
man as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me,
held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor.
-- Carlos Casteneda

Those who do not remember history are doomed to sound silly.
-- Carole Ashmore

What's the use of playing roles unless there's excess
involved?
-- Carter Wilson

People who use jumper cables are condoning the use of tit
clamps in Contra Costa County.
-- Carter Wilson

In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than
violence.
-- Cesar Chavez

To know the world one must construct it.
-- Cesare Pavese

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get
yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is
to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding
fathers used in the struggle for independence.
-- Charles A. Beard

Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing
oneself. 
-- Charles Baudelaire

Unable to abolish love, the Church has decided at least to
disinfect it, and has invented marriage.
-- Charles Baudelaire

Before you kill something make sure you have something
better to replace it with; something better than political
opportunist slamming hate horseshit in the public park.
-- Charles Bukowski
   "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," 1969

That's what friendship means: sharing the prejudice of
experience.
-- Charles Bukowski

The present time has one advantage over every other -- it is
our own.
-- Charles Caleb Colton

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the
servant.
-- Charles De Gaulle

It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually
at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its
worst and least pleasant examples.
-- Charles Dickens

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a
frontier.
-- Charles F. Kettering

Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
-- Charles G. Dawes

Democracy is the power of equal votes for unequal minds.
-- Charles I of England

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe

If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves.
-- Charles Mingus

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth
makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
-- Charles Peguy

What do I put behind my ears to attract men?  My Legs!
-- Charles Pierce

No one should be getting special privileges, not white
heterosexual Protestant males and not any other specific
group.  Everyone should be *equal*.
-- Steven J. Sobol
It's just that white heterosexual Protestant males are more
equal than the rest of us.  It's been that way since the
Founding Fathers established this country.  Women,
minorities, gay/lesbian/bisexual people, and other oppressed
groups have been working to be included for the past couple
of centuries.
-- Charles S. Collins

Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about
   tomorrow.  Maybe we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up.  I'm still hoping
   that yesterday will get better.
-- Charles Schultz

Special Rights: Aspiration towards any social status higher
than marginalized clown; this being the very highest level
that even the most progressive strains of heterosexual
society will ever grudgingly grant the male homosexual.
Most social duties and responsibilities in the heterosexual
context are "special rights" in the homosexual context.
-- Charlie Fulton

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited
over nothing ...  and then they marry him.
-- Cher

It is futile to try to force your will on people who can
tune you out with the press of a key.
-- Chip Salzenberg

No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a
retrieval system, or transmit disease, in any form, without
the permissiveness of the author.
-- Chris Shaw

It's spring and the idiots are in bloom.
-- Chris Stephenson

If stupidity was a crime, honey, you'd get a life sentence.
-- Chris Stephenson

May your future be limited only by your dreams.
-- Christa McAuliffe

There is still no known reason for lesbianism.

Oh, c'mon.  What about Susan Sarandon?  She's a great reason
for lesbianism.  Also Jamie Lee Curtis -- yum!  And of
course, let's not forget Warren Beatty, a stunningly good
reason for lesbianism.
-- Christina Black

When I ever become concerned with whether or not I'm an
embarrassment to the majority of people [gay or otherwise] I
think I'll have long since lost sight of the reason for
action in the first place.
-- Christopher B. DeVault

Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the
slaves that can be sold.
-- Christopher Columbus

There is only one success -- to be able to spend your life
in your own way.
-- Christopher Morley

Accept me for what I am and I'll accept you for what you're
accepted as.
-- Christopher Nolan

Laws were made to be broken.
-- Christopher North

Lao-Tan asked Confucius: "What do you mean by benevolence
and righteousness?" Confucius said: "To be in one's inmost
heart in kindly sympathy with all things; to love all men
and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature of
benevolence and righteousness."
-- Chuang Tsu

I think their experience with us may have helped their
contemptuousness; the ignorance they come by naturally.
-- Chuck McManis

Verbosity says it all.
-- Ciaran McHale

Being able to ask is the only way to learn.
-- Chris Bazzie
Not true.  One can also go into a bookshop or library,
obtain a good book and read it.
-- Ciaran McHale

I was talking with a friend last night and I found out that
a photo of Blair and me dancing naked in the 1990 gay pride
parade is one of the prominent photos in the gay studies
department of City College here in San Francisco.
-- Jeff Dauber
Maybe Andy Warhol was wrong about the 15 minutes of fame.
Perhaps he meant 15 cm. 
-- Ciaran McHale

What is dignity without honesty? 
-- Cicero

Salus populi suprema est lex.  (The good of the people is
the greatest law.)
-- Cicero

Cedant arma togae, concedant laurea laudi.  (Let war yield
to peace, laurels to paeans.)
-- Cicero

Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam.  (The sinews of war,
unlimited money.)
-- Cicero

Silent enim leges inter arma.  (Laws are inoperative in
war.)
-- Cicero

Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo
pilosophorum.  (Nothing so absurd can be said, that some
philosopher has not said it.)
-- Cicero

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike
charity, it should end there.
-- Clare Boothe Luce

There are no hopeless situations, only hopeless people.
-- Clare Boothe Luce

History repeats itself.  That's one of the things wrong with
history.
-- Clarence Darrow

I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother
Goose.
-- Clarence Darrow

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward
our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the
same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our
common doom.
-- Clarence Darrow

Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom,
Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.
-- Clarence Darrow

The true worth of a researcher lies in pursuing what he did
not seek in his experiment as well as what he sought.
-- Claude Bernard

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for
will not understand what he finds. 
-- Claude Bernard

The world began without man, and it will complete itself
without him.
-- Claude Levi-Strauss
   "Tristes Tropiques," 1955

Were we the ones who called the shots, there would be no
institutional discrimination against us.
-- Clay Bond

Stupidity is evil waiting to happen.
-- Clay Bond

I got up April Fools' Day, stumbled into the kitchen to make
coffee, and stepped on Mr.  Wasp.  He objected to being
stepped on; I objected to his objection.  I shared my
feelings about this with Mr.  Wasp, nurturingly of course,
and I'm sure he was quite in touch with his Inner Larva as I
squished him into pate de wasp noir on the kitchen floor.  I
think I woke the whole neighborhood as I shared ...
-- Clay Bond

When ducks are too stupid to realize that they are ducks,
they will insist that you are "mud-slinging" or making
"cheap shots" if you call them ducks.
-- Clay Bond

"Power of expression" and "creativity" are luxuries
available only to those who can write.  You cannot make
Poulet a la Vallee d'Auge if you do not know how to use the
stove.
-- Clay Bond

What you said was perfectly clear -- but not to you.
-- Clay Bond

There is an important distinction between prejudice and
bigotry which we often gloss over.  Prejudice results from
misinformation and lack of exposure, and can be eradicated
by education; bigotry is obstinate, having begun as
prejudice, but now blind and irrational.  The bigot cannot
be educated, because he/she actively refuses to give up
his/her blindness, even in the face of information.
-- Clay Bond

Do you think the Klan will let the [Gay Big Apple] Corps
dress up in skirts and cheer for them the next time they
have a rally?
-- Clay Bond

You give yourself too much credit.  One must first be
sentient to be wrong.
-- Clay Bond

If we promise to miss you will you leave, or are we going to
have to get out the salt?
-- Clay Bond

"What's the difference between grammar and orthography?"

Dear heart,

Pull out your nearest dictionary and look up the word
"pedantic." Assume a lotus position, breathe deeply, and
instead of contemplating the Allness of the Oneness of
Your Navelness, meditate on this:

  "What might be intriguing about someone who prides
  themselves on their gramatical [sic] perfectionism?"

Then take a pill.
-- Clay Bond

There is an important distinction between prejudice and
bigotry which we often gloss over.  Prejudice results from
misinformation and lack of exposure, and can be eradicated
by education; bigotry is obstinate, having begun as
prejudice, but now blind and irrational.  The bigot cannot
be educated, because he/she actively refuses to give up
his/her blindness, even in the face of information.
-- Clay Bond

A very useful distinction, which I quote in case anyone
missed it the first time around.
-- David Christopher Rogers

Useful only so long as we remember that faggots and dykes
are no less fond of their own hateful ignorances, and no
less prone to hug the security blanket of their own
bigotries. 
-- Clay Bond

If you were arrested, would you get down on your knees and
gratefully thank the cop for not beating you to death as
well?
-- Clay Bond

I pity you if you feel that the "support" of such
fair-weather "friends" is more important than self-respect.
Such "friends" offer no support, but rather slavery in a
different cell: that of their approval.
-- Clay Bond

Anyone whose grasp of reality is so tenuous that they are
scared away by phosphors on a screen is seriously neurotic
and needs to be seeing a psychiatrist.
-- Clay Bond

You must be able to grasp a point before you can make one.
-- Clay Bond

Let me write that down and have it embossed on my garbage
can.
-- Clay Bond

It is much less painful to take the rosy glasses off
yourself than it is to have them knocked off by a fist.
-- Clay Bond

Rosa von Praunheim should get a job which would better
utilize his magnificent talent -- bagging groceries, for
example.
-- Clay Bond

She did not say that water is wet; she only happened to use
it as an example of a fluid.
-- Clay Bond

When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than
you did before.  You see more in you than there was before.
-- Clifton Fadiman
   "Any Number Can Play," 1957

I still comb my hair the same, still wear the same cologne,
And I still drive that pickup truck that the same old bank
still owns.  Since you left, everybody says I'm not the guy
they've known, The lights are on, but nobody's home.
-- Clint Black
   "Nobody's Home"

There is no delight the equal of dread. 
-- Clive Barker

Television is the first truly democratic culture -- the
first culture available to everybody and entirely governed
by what the people want.  The most terrifying thing is what
people do want.
-- Clive Barnes
   "New York Times," 1969

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything
that I did not like would have an opposite, which I would
like.
-- Coco Chanel

What little I have read of these two [the New Republic's
Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes] is sufficient to grieve
the trees that had to be sacrificed for the paper to print
their cant.
-- Colbrun Eigen

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely
to grasp the world, but to change it.
-- Colin Wilson

L'amour vient de l'aveuglement, l'amitie de la connaissance.
(Love comes from blindness, friendship from knowledge.)
-- Comte de Bussy-Rabutin
   "Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules"

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
-- Confucius

What I am saying is that gay is good because it is, not
because we can't help it.  Love is good because it's love,
not because we can't choose to love in any other fashion.
-- Cory Kerens

It is better to waste one's youth, than to do nothing at all
with it.
-- Courteline

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle
class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
-- Cyril Connolly
   "The Unquiet Grave" 1945

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.
-- Cyril Connolly

The chief product of an automated society is a widespread
and deepening sense of boredom.
-- Cyril Parkinson

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion
moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
-- D.H. Lawrence

To preserve the silence within -- amid all the noise.  To
remain open and quiet no matter how many tramp across the
parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.
-- Dag Hammarskjold

"C579676@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu -- not *just* another number."
At the University of Iowa, you aren't just a another number.
You're a just another number with a dollar sign in front of it.
-- Dan R Sydnes

[Regarding the BSA:] It's now somehow not the politically
correct thing to, God forbid, have an organization that's
still dedicated to instilling pre-teen and teenage boys with
proper religious and moral values.
-- Stan Krieger
Yup, it's a darned shame they ever had to let in the Jews
and Negroes, too.  What's all this namby-pamby toleration
crap they're trying to brainwash our kids with?  Do they
want them to think for themselves or something?  Are they
crazy?
-- Dan Sissman

You can make all the rational points you want about it, but
jealousy has nothing to do with rational thinking.
-- Dana Bergen

If anyone could be considered to be tagging along, it is the
white-middle-class-conventional-conservative-monogamous-
gay-men now benefitting from the past and present efforts of
those with less to lose.
-- Dana Bergen

Why on earth would you assume that insulting someone by
comparing them to a radish is in anyway insulting to
radishes?
-- Dana Bergen

Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs
from your own.  You may both be wrong.
-- Dandemis

Heterosexuals do not, in general, enumerate reasons they
aren't coming out.
-- Daniel A. Murphy

We tend to see our own experiences as the normal process, so
we are often amazed that anyone could have taken a different
path.  But when we do meet up, it's always fascinating to
compare notes about the different ways to get there.
-- Daniel Gilly

Falwell is a real asshole.  
-- John Allen Phebus
I, on the other hand, think he's revolting.
-- Daniel Gilly

We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses,
but from our illusions.  We are haunted, not by reality, but
by those images we have put in place of reality.
-- Daniel J. Boorstin

Well, I suppose if the bible said jump off a ten story
building you would do that to.  Why don't you pray for
intelligence.
-- Daniel Joseph Burns

The only thing that separates us from the animals is
superstition and mindless rituals.
-- Daniel Klein

Do you remember "Buck Rogers in the 25th [or whatever it
was] Century?"  It was almost totally unmemorable except for:
.  [whoever it was]'s muscular and handsome torso swaggering
   around the screen for two hours, and
.  an advanced computer in the shape of a canteen called
   "Doctor Theo" who *definitely* had had his PROMs burned
   in a hair salon!
-- Daniel MacKay

Dare to be meek. 
-- Daniel MacKay

We, the lesbian and gay community, are beginning to live
with AIDS instead of dying of AIDS.  We've been through a
hell of a ten years.  Coming out of this is going to be the
most beautiful thing our queer nation has ever seen.
-- Daniel MacKay

The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms that it takes
whatever turns to it.
-- Dante Alighieri

I'll tell you who is to blame, the Japanese are to blame.
If they hadn't invented the camcorder, none of this would
have happened.
-- Darryl Gates

June 14 -- Eight concerned parents in rural Georgia sue the
local school district for teaching their children the
alphabet, which can be used to form dirty words.
-- Dave Barry

Why did people respond to the Bakkers this way?  How could
such a grasping, shallow and flagrantly self-absorbed couple
manage to acquire such a large and fervent following?  One
widely accepted answer, of course, is that the followers had
the same average intelligence as margarine.
-- Dave Barry

Helms being fucked with a BIG dildo, upon which are scriven
the words: "National Endowment for the Arts."
-- Dave Kerlick

Always be nice to hets -- they're god's way of making more
queers.
-- Dave Rindos

I think an embryo/fetus/baby becomes a "person" when it is
smarter than a non-primate like a dog.  By those standards,
chimpanzees and gorillas are persons (although somewhat
cognitively impaired -- kind of like Fundamentalist
Christians), but human newborns are not.
-- Dave Touretzsky

When male bashing is causing men to be self-flagellating to
this degree, then yes I feel it's an issue.
-- David Ash

The United States has entered an anti-intellectual phase in
its history, perhaps most clearly seen in our virtually
thought-free political life.
-- David Baltimore

We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it
from our children.
-- David Brower

People look ridiculous when they're in ecstasy.
-- David Byrne

Schools are for training people how to listen to other
people.
-- David Byrne

Crime is a job.  Sex is a job.  Growing up is a job.  School
is a job.  Going to parties is a job.  Religion is a job.
Being creative is a job.
-- David Byrne

Sexuality does not "turn on" at puberty and "turn off"
at menopause.  It is not a thing external, no matter how
hard our culture teaches us to push it away.  It is every
bit as integral and fundamental the day you're born as it
is the day you die. 
-- David Casti

So, why stopping the fun when it is for free?
-- Alberto Pinkas
It's not free, it's not fun, and there's no stopping it.
Blech.
-- David Christopher Rogers

If I may be so bold as to suggest another project for
heterosexuals, try wearing a "gay-sloganed" button, or
better yet, T-shirt to work, around shopping, etc.  I find
the reactions I get when I wear a T-shirt which says
"LEAGUE--Lesbian and Gay United Employees of AT&T" are
markedly different than when I wear one that says (for
example) "Boston."
-- Evelyn Leeper
Depending on your state, the reaction may be as minimal as a
delayed promotion, or as catastrophic as being fired.  I
recommend avoiding these dangerous phrases and sticking to
speech with more constitutional protections, such as burning
crosses on your co-worker's lawns.
-- David Christopher Rogers

Currently, we have true equality: both gay people and
straight people can be fired because they're gay.
-- David Christopher Rogers

The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to
the problem of limited resources that it is commonly
employed only by small children and great nations.
-- David Friedman

The disarmament of fear, in ourselves and those that oppose,
propels us.  Every step forward brings the possibility of
backlash.  But forward we go.
-- David G. Welton

If stubborn persistence were one of the scout laws, the Boy
Scouts of America would be living by their credo.  Lately it
seems that BSA has spent more time and money in court trying
to protect its discriminatory policies than doing the
obligatory "good turn daily."
-- David G. Welton

Back of tranquility lies conquered unhappiness.
-- David Grayson

Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions and can
never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them.
-- David Hume

As to whether it's ethical or not is another matter
entirely.  Since I have nothing to hide, I've nothing to
complain about.  -- [common remark]
The "I have nothing to hide ..." mentality is precisely the
kind of attitude which has allowed repressive political
systems to rise to power throughout history.  That is a
*very dangerous attitude*.  I don't remember who said it,
but "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance".
-- David K. Taylor

"Frottage," or "the Princeton rub," named after Princeton
University.
-- Jack Hamilton
Having gone there, I know it is only a real Princeton rub
if: (1) It is usually done between a student and a teacher;
(2) It is preceded by an earnest conversation about F.
Scott Fitzgerald; (3) Neither partner removes his trousers.
-- David Kerlick

You can be a professional without being constipated about
it.
-- David Keyser

We've learned what a valuable contribution gay men and
lesbians make to the daily life and business of New York.
It's time for private companies to learn this message and
profit from it too.  This conference is the right start.
-- David N. Dinkins
   Mayor, New York City

Given the choice between civil liberties and the votes of
the rabid religious right, I suspect that Our Darling
President [Bush] would happily march us into the ovens and
start the gas with his own hands.
-- David Parsons

Darrell Roy Hougen writes: ['phobic shit]
Please go away, we have chainsaws.
-- David Parsons

Hold your nose and vote for Bill!
-- Howard Solomon
Well, I'd rather have a democrat fucking a bimbo than a
republican fucking the country!
-- David Preston

Death is death, if the brain no longer exists, obviously you
can't think.
-- Lawrence Foard
But you can still post...
-- David Preston

Nana is now 99, in a nursing home, healthy, and still as
sharp as a tack (not the best situation when you're
surrounded by the demented, but she makes do).
-- Steve Dyer
Ah, then she'd have no problem relating to Usenet...
-- David Preston

Unfortunately, as Usenet gets out to the masses it will
become diluted.
-- Nelson Minar
*Again*!?!? 
-- David Preston

So, by extension, people with open relationships would not
fall under this restriction; on the contrary, they show a
precedent of being open and above-board even in sensitive
areas.  How do you think good old Ross feels about that?
-- Roger Klorese
He'd probably try to get his term reduced to two years so he
could avoid the godlessness and immorality.
-- David Preston

I'm a *fabulous* cook.  You'll forget you ever wanted to eat
meat (grin), but you gotta like kids & cats.
-- Ailsa Murphy
I've heard of ovo-lacto-vegetarian, but paedo-felinus-vegetarian?
-- David Preston

When they broadcast this footage, they proceeded it with
something like "KRON has learned that a group of paedophiles
has been meeting in a public library." They implied over and
over again that these people, whose faces they were showing
on TV, were criminals.  Hell, maybe half of them are, but
the other half have been slandered and had their reputations
ruined.  It's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty,
not innocent until caught in the wrong place on a slow news
day.
-- David Preston

Good ol' Merriam-Webster knows that you can't take 'u' out
of masturbation.
-- David Preston

On behalf of all on the net, thank you for the "Fuck Off",
it will look lovely over the crapper.
-- James F. Gray
Well, at least you'll have something to look at while you
post.
-- David Preston

Or perhaps alt.sex.bondage is intermixing with your uucp
binaries; use the -preference and -orientation options on
the ls command to find out more.
-- David Schachter

It [ads showing two women who might be a couple] reminds me
of the "lesbian" scenes in Playboy magazine: women getting
it on for men's enjoyment.  I started calling this stuff
"Lesploitation" because that's basically what it is.
-- David Speakman

It was a dark day for education here when the Administration
of the University (a "top-ten" institution, totally
committed to Continuing Improvement, formerly known as Total
Quality Management) began referring to students as
"products."
-- J.N. Shaumeyer
Yes, but they have to start some place.  The next step, of
course, is to refer to them as "by-products," an
intermediate term before calling them what they really are:
effluvia.
-- David Stevenson

Living alone means that the dishes will still be sitting in
the same place tomorrow morning!
-- Gary Klein
Not in earthquake country.
-- David Stevenson

People who use radishes to insult other people are demeaning
the entire vegetable kingdom.  But I guess that's the type
of behavior we've come to expect from omnivores.
-- David Stevenson

Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only
comes one day at a time.
-- Dean Acheson

It was an education to hear that Americans thought all Brits
(men, at least) were gay.  This is because straight America
mistakes culture for effeminacy.
-- Mick Washbrook
And then mistakes effeminacy for gayness.
-- Debby Swayne

Is simplicity best, or simply the easiest?
-- Depeche Mode

Silence is the door between Love and Fear; and on Fear's
side there is no latch.
-- Diane Duane
   "The Door into Fire"

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially
profitable to dispense it.
-- Dick Cavett
   "Playboy," 1971

Looking toward the next century, Pulitzer prize winner David
Halberstamm observed, "The advantages will be held by the
society which uses its resources, natural and human, more
skillfully." To me this means extending opportunities to
everyone focusing on the values and goals we share rather
than the ways we are different.  I believe the companies and
individuals who succeed will be those who embrace human
diversity.
-- Dick McCormick
   President and CEO, U.S. West Inc.

Success can corrupt; usefulness can only exalt.
-- Dimitri Mitropoulos

What people do behind their closed doors is certainly not my
concern unless I'm behind there with 'em and wanting to do
whatever.
-- Dolly Parton

Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have merely
quit in disgust.
-- Don Herold

We're not talking about the same thing," he said.  "For you
the world is weird because if you're not bored with it
you're at odds with it.  For me the world is weird because
it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my
interest has been to convince you that you must accept
responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in
this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time.  I wanted to
convince you that you must learn to make every act count,
since you are going to be here for only a short while, in
fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.
-- Don Juan

Honesty is a good thing but it is not profitable to its
possessor unless it is kept under control.
-- Don Marquis

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and
are willing to go through hell to get it.
-- Don Marquis

My great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel McIlvaine, fought
as a member of the 10th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.  He died
during the [Civil] war.
-- Clayton Cramer
All the good it does me.  He's dead and you're alive.
-- Donald Agarrat

Sometimes I catch myself thinking about my father and I
wonder what I did.  I do so many things just like him, and I
look just like him.  I look in the mirror and my face morphs
into his.  Neglect and abandonment justified from the pulpit
and the Oval Office don't belong in the life of a child.  It
still hurts.
-- Donald Agarrat

Knowing you are right is a small consolation as you hear the
jackboots coming to attempt your collection for the camps.
-- Donn Pedro

Is fighting violence WITH violence the answer? -- (whoever)
   If you want to survive.  A dead pacifist is a useless
thing.  A short statement only made once.
   A prepared pacifist, one willing and able to fight if
need be, makes a statement every time they act.
   Warriors don't exist just to decimate populations under
the "leadership" of countries.
-- Donn Pedro

Never confuse the unwillingness to do a thing with the
inability to do a thing.
-- Donn Pedro

Acknowledge your ignorance and do something about it.  Learn
something new every day.  Make it your goal to depend less
upon the generosity and charity of others by acquiring a
wide variety of skills and experiences.  There is nothing
wrong with being good at many things, master of none.  A
specialist, while valuable, can be a fish out of water when
removed from the realm of their experience.
-- Donn Pedro

Acknowledge your ignorance and do something about it.  Along
the way you will make some amazing blunders.  You will be
dumbfounded at the monumentally stupid things inexperience
can bring you to.  You will risk looking the fool to
experts.
-- Donn Pedro

Independence and freedom are only possible when you can
truly survive, maybe thrive, under a wide variety of
situations and environments.  Situations and environments
that can defeat, and even kill, the happily ignorant.
-- Donn Pedro

Kill them.  Kill them all.
I doubt that we could find enough places to dispose of
   the bodies.
You could put them in the local library.  No one ever
   goes there. 
-- Donn Pedro

Homosexuals do build relationships and families; we are no
more able nor inclined to stop doing that than heterosexuals
are.  Negative pressures from society don't prevent us from
falling in love; they just make us suffer for it when we do.
My partner and my child and I are in fact a family.  The
question is whether or not society tries to undermine the
functioning of my family at every opportunity.  You are
entitled to choose to participate in that undermining, of
course, but you should not be surprised to be labeled a
homophobe if you do.  It is more than sex that is the issue
for most homosexuals; it is our lives and our families.
-- Doretta Schrock

I may believe that Buddhism is wrong and that all Buddhists
will inevitably burn in hell.  I may believe that black
people are inferior to white people.  I may hold those
beliefs quite strongly.  I may believe that any other
position is absolutely immoral and a majority of the
populace may well agree with me.  But the extent to which we
succeed in encoding those beliefs into our legal and social
structure is the extent to which we are not a free society.
-- Doretta Schrock

The morality advocated by those you call "gay liberation's
true believers" is indeed a radical one.  It is rooted in
such tenets as "all men are created equal" and that everyone
is entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." It is based on a strong belief in freedom of
association, freedom of religion, the free exercise of
individual rights and responsibilities, freedom of speech.
All very radical ideas -- still.
-- Doretta Schrock

You, along with other heterosexuals, clearly have the power
to ensure that my child be taught by her teachers that
homosexuality is wrong or to pretend that we don't exist.
You, collectively, have the power to deny her the protection
of her stepmother's health insurance should I become unable
to work.  You have the power to make sure that my pension
benefits are unavailable to my partner.  You have the power
to ensure that in order to protect my family I must pretend
in public that my partner and I do not have the deeply
committed relationship that we do in fact share.  You have
the power to send my child the message that her family is
not real and her parents are bad people.  I do not believe
that it is in your best interest to do these things.  More
importantly, I will never, ever, acquiesce in them.  I
cannot.
-- Doretta Schrock

Your "reasonable middle ground" offers me the right to
freedom from arrest for "homosexual acts" and the right to
sue employers or landlords who discriminate against me.  In
exchange, I must deny the truth and meekly help in the
pretense that all the stable, healthy families in Oregon are
heterosexual.  I must give up the hope that, ultimately,
truth does prevail.  Is there such a thing as "half a loaf
of liberty?" I think not.
-- Doretta Schrock

Auntie Em --  Hate you.  Hate Kansas.  Taking the dog.
-- Dorothy

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
-- Dorothy Parker

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.  It should
be thrown with great force.
-- Dorothy Parker

If, with the literate, I am/ Impelled to try an epigram,/ I
never seek to claim the credit:/ We all assume that Oscar
said it.
-- Dorothy Parker

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty
is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty
itself survives...  When liberty is taken away by force it
can be restored by force.  When it is relinquished
voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.
-- Dorothy Thompson
   American journalist (1894-1961)

You're damn right we need a rational code of morality and
ethics.  But not much progress can be made in that direction
while we've still got a majority ranting about gods, devils,
souls, and absolute morality, and using an ancient book
written by ignorant nomads as a guide.
-- Doug Graham

You should be banished to the hell of TCP/IP lovers (it is
hot here, but we have *great* net connectivity!).
-- Doug Humphrey 

A child is a person who can't understand why someone would
give away a perfectly good kitten.
-- Doug Larson

Family Values: the sexist, racist, homophobic, classist,
"Christian" values of the 50s.
-- Doug Sewell

I love deadlines.  I like the whooshing sound they make as
they fly by.
-- Douglas Adams

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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

It is an important and popular fact that things are not
always what they seem.  For instance, on the planet Earth,
man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than
dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New
York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever
done was muck about in the water having a good time.  But
conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were
far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same
reasons.
-- Douglas Adams
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
should on no account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

In the beginning the Universe was created.  This has made a
lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
move.
-- Douglas Adams
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the
ground and miss.
-- Douglas Adams
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

This idea (of not noticing the identity of certain
repetitive events) is interesting when we apply it to
ourselves.  Are there highly repetitive events which occur in
our lives time and time again, and which we handle in the
identical stupid way each time, because we don't have enough
of an overview to perceive their sameness?
-- Douglas Hofstadter

Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth.
-- Douglas Jerrold

The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the
boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world
in an ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it possible with
their help, and after suitable internal and external
preparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to
plan, so to speak...  I see the true importance of LSD in
the possibility of providing material aid to meditation
aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and
working character of LSD as a sacred drug.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman
   discoverer of LSD

The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as
unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
-- Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish
sometimes.
-- Dr. Who

I'm not interested in gay rights, I'm interested in queer
liberation.
-- Drew Lewis

One must be willing to go outside the system when the system
is not responding.
-- Drew Lewis

Silence is the voice of complicity.
-- Drew Lewis

A people that values its privileges above its principles
soon loses both.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to
do more to promote peace than our governments.  Indeed, I
think that people want peace so much that one of these days
governments had better get out of the way and let them have
it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket
fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It
is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way of
life at all in any true sense.  Under the clouds of war, it
is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
   April 16, 1953

Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be
surprised if its opponents blame it for the draught.
-- Dwight Morrow

When a man's education is finished, he is finished.
-- E.A. Filene

There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on
account of one thing always leading to another.
-- E.B. White

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of
the people are right more than half of the time.
-- E.B. White

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the
world and a desire to enjoy the world.  This makes it hard
to plan the day.
-- E.B. White

The emotions may be endless.  The more we express them, the
more we may have to express.
-- E.M. Forster

A thief believes everybody steals. 
-- E.W. Howe

If traditional values of vagueness and inaccuracy were good
enough for our parents they should be good enough for us.
-- Eamonn McManus

During a recent three-hour train journey in a carriage full
of bawling kiddies, it struck me that it is odd that
railways and airlines separate smokers from non-smokers, but
not children from people.
-- Eamonn McManus

Who dares gets a mouthful of earwigs.
Plus ca change, plus c'est un cafard dans la gueule.
A louse in the pooter is worth two in the mouth.
Quis custodiet ipsos pedes?
All's well that poots well.
Look before you suck.
-- Eamonn McManus

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a
couple of car payments.
-- Earl Wilson

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting
for our wits to grow sharper.
-- Eden Phillpots

Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff

I place my faith in fools.  Self confidence, my friends call
it.
-- Edgar Allen Poe

Everyone has talent at twenty-five.  The difficulty is to
have it at fifty.
-- Edgar Degas

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little
better.
-- Edgar W. Howe

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
persons to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- 
it's one damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has
always struck me as rather silly.  I would rather use them
to mimic something better.
-- Edsger Dijkstra

The question of whether a computer can think is no more
interesting than the question of whether a submarine can
swim.
-- Edsger Dijkstra 

All that is human must retrograde, if it do not advance.
-- Edward Gibbon

The scientists most esteemed by their colleagues are those
who are both very original and committed to the abstract
ideal of truth in the midst of clamoring demands of ego and
ideology.  They pass the acid test of promoting new knowledge
even at the expense of losing credit for it.
-- Edward O. Wilson
   "Biophilia"

The unique operations of the (human) brain are the result of
natural selection operating through the filter of culture.
They have suspended us between the two antipodal ideals of
nature and machine, forest and city, the natural and the
artifactual, relentlessly seeking, in the words of
geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, an equilibrium not of this world.
-- Edward O. Wilson
   "Biophilia"

The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes
longer.
-- Edward R. Murrow

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the
situation.
-- Edward R. Murrow

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for
solutions.
-- Edward R. Murrow

How about, the "citizens" have votes, which they can
make on subjects which affect them, and in practice the
results of the votes are obeyed?
-- Ken Arromdee
Votes are for weenies.  Post early and often.
-- Edward Vielmetti

Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear not
your friends, for they can only betray you.  Fear only the
indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk
safely on the earth.
-- Edward Yashinsky

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not
completely unhappen.
-- Edward de Bono

If we find nothing of interest where we are, we are likely
to find little of lasting interest where we wish to go.
-- Edwin Way Teale

After awareness and understanding comes action, I think.  I
believe that we who are involved in this "valuing diversity"
kind of work need to not just increase awareness, but also
encourage people to act on that awareness to make things
better.
-- Elaine May

Tell you what.  When the vast majority of straight folks in
this country learn how to have a private life privately,
learn how to "just be themselves without telling it to
everybody", why then I'll try to learn from them how to do
the same.
-- Elaine May

That was when I found out he harbored the misconception that
gay men are attracted to all other males.
-- Harry Foster
They all seem to think this.  Is this information part of
the early-on programming for heterosexuals or something?
-- Henry Mensch
It's an ego thing.  They think the whole world wants them.
It's a projection thing.  They want to fuck every woman who
walks the earth, therefore a gay man wants to fuck every man
who walks the earth.  It's a phobe thing.  They fear what
they do not understand.
-- Elaine Richards

You ever notice how the ones against abortion are for
capital punishment?  Typical fisherman's attitude: throw 'em
back in when they're small and kill them when they're
bigger.
-- Elayne Boosler

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard

The free mind must have one policeman: irony.
-- Elbert Hubbard

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept
alive.  One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on
life.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of
Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of
education or of government by any one particular religious
faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

I can't stand people who say "Bisexuality is the only way to
be." Straights, gays, lesbians, bisexuals ...  we're all
just people.  If you never have a homosexual encounter from
birth to death ...  if you never have a heterosexual
encounter ...  so be it!
-- Elf Sternberg

But more frustrating are the ones who say "I could never/ I
would never." Let's be honest -- you don't know.  You don't
know if you'll ever win a lottery, you don't know if you'll
ever be in the position where you'll have to kill someone,
you don't know if you'll ever fall in love with someone,
*anyone*, regardless of gender.
-- Elf Sternberg

Equal rights are not special rights.  There is no such thing
as a "homosexual" cause above and beyond obtaining equal
rights and regards without concern for a person's sexual
orientation.  Thinking otherwise is sheer homophobia.
-- Elf Sternberg

One thing I've learned from being part of the gay/les/bi
movement, it's the ones who are afraid who die fastest.
It's the ones who are too scared to keep books in their
home, it's the ones who are too nervous to go into a good
gay/les bookstore, who don't learn about safe sex.  The
straight world isn't doing anything for them in that
respect, and they're not going to learn if they don't come
out.
-- Elf Sternberg

Confused the Hell out of my postman today.  I got my copies
of Playboy and Advocate on the same day!
-- Elf Sternberg

That's what being alive is all about.  No deity, no higher
goal exists than to bring joy to another person.
-- Elf Sternberg

Whoso loves believes the impossible.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally
you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty
annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor

Those Macintoshes aren't the cute little boxes you think
they are.
-- Elizabeth Zwicky

Big Brother is hallucinating. 
-- Elizabeth Zwicky

Traditionally, emotional and social problems have been
judged as the moral shortcomings of an individual.  Someone
suffering from a psychiatric illness or an addiction is
rarely viewed as a person who has a disorder or who is taxed
by overwhelming circumstances.  Instead the affliction is
becomes a metaphor for a host of evils; it serves a
testimony of the individual's unworthiness, a cause for
condemnation.
-- Ellen L. Bassuk
   "Scientific American," December 1991

The cure for boredom is curiosity.  There is no cure for
curiosity.
-- Ellen Parr

What has Barbara Bush done to hurt you? 
-- Thomas Farrell
What do those who cheer at KKK rallies do to hurt us?
-- Ellen Seebacher

Don't fault Barbara Bush for loving and supporting her
husband.  She's doing what she thinks is right, no matter if
you agree with it or not.
-- Thomas Farrell
Don't fault those women who went around plugging "Kinder,
Kirche, Kueche." They were just going with what they thought
was right.  Just because they yelled "Heil" with the men
doesn't mean we should think they were bad or anything.
-- Ellen Seebacher

It wasn't lies.  It was just bullshit, that's all.
-- Elwood Blues

"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --
-- Emily Dickinson

Capacity to terminate 
Is a specific grace ...
-- Emily Dickinson

Household pets should never be allowed at the dining table
unless they can hold their own in conversation.
-- Emily Post

Before I came here I was confused about this subject.
Having listened to your lecture I am still confused, but on
a higher level.
-- Enrico Fermi

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one
already knows.
-- Epictetus

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice
as much as we speak.
-- Epictetus

The means by which certain pleasures are gained bring pains
many times greater than the pleasures.
-- Epicurus

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the
means he uses to frighten you.
-- Eric Hoffer
   "The Faber Book of Aphorisms," 1964

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty
life.
-- Eric Hoffer

Given the choice, I'd have been outta there faster than you
can click your heels together.  Dorothy and Toto were full
of shit.
-- Eric Holeman

The pink triangle is a strong symbol; stronger, I'm sure,
than the Nazis realized.  They chose it intending the pink
to mean shame.  Little did they know that we would hijack
it; never could they have thought that pink would become a
symbol of pride a thousand times stronger than the shame
they tried to force on us.
-- Eric Holeman

"Faggot" and "homo" have joined "queer" in my handbag of
reclaimed words.  By the time I'm done, the bigots, unable
to get a rise out of me with queer or fag or homo or
cocksucker, will be reduced to screaming "You fan of show
tunes, you!"
-- Eric Holeman

My apologies to all concerned.  I shall endeavor to be more
careful with cross posting.  However, as long as I'm posting
...  

Uh-oh.  Shoulda quit while you were only slightly behind,
dear.
-- Eric Holeman

Do homosexuals deserve different rights than heterosexuals?
Of course not.  (unknown idiot)

Very well.  Have it your way, then, and write to your
congressperson and tell him/her that all the "different
rights" for heteros, like marriage, or being able to enlist
in the military, are absolutely unacceptable to you.  Or do
the opposite, and urge him/her to allow us to enjoy the
rights that you do.

But until that happens, do stop blathering about how it
doesn't matter if you're gay.  It only makes you look
stupid.
-- Eric Holeman

How dare I get angry, simply because one straight male
getting AIDS is bigger news than all the thousands of homos
who are already dead.  Thilly moi.
-- Eric Holeman

Like most, I'm sorry that Magic has contracted this deadly
disease.  His family and wife have to be going through Hell.
But also like most, I have to say he brought this on
himself.
-- Kevin L. Wright

I've always wondered about people like this.  I wonder if,
for fun, they might visit the funeral of someone who died of
a heart attack, and offer comforting words like, "Well, I'm
sorry Irving died, but you know he brought it on himself
with all those steaks he used to eat." Or maybe something
like, "It's just too bad about Linda, but you know, she was
asking for it, smoking those two packs a day." Or even, "I'm
so sorry, but I did tell him he should have moved out of
that neighborhood before someone blew his brains out."
-- Eric Holeman

Diversity via exclusion, as it were.  I'll have to file that
one away with fucking for virginity.
-- Eric Holeman

Either you have power or you don't.  Either you drool or you
don't.  If you beg even a little, it's still begging.
-- Eric Holeman

Don't tell me that you're doing something valuable for me
when you're quietly climbing your way to the top of the
straight ladder.
-- Eric Holeman 

For every Leonard Matlovich, there are ten thousand Pete
Williamses.
-- Eric Holeman

You're probably the sort who would have Dorothy arrested for
throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West.
-- Eric Holeman

If that's not clear enough, perhaps we should produce an
instructional coloring book for you.
-- Eric Holeman

Most straight people out there hate your guts.  You or any
other faggot could drop dead tomorrow, and it wouldn't
bother the straight people of the world one bit.
-- Eric Holeman

I really pity the homo who thinks the issue of his own
survival is just another debatable opinion.
-- Eric Holeman

I, for one, have no desire to convince Middle America that
liking homos will give their mouths sex appeal.
-- Eric Holeman

I gave a considerable amount of thought to the "Support the
Troops" thing, and came to the conclusion that what Frank
Sinatra sang about love and marriage is equally true about
war and soldiers: Ya can't have one without the other.
-- Eric Holeman

Insofar as possible, I surround myself with pleasant,
tolerant, intelligent people.  Life's too short to spend it
with people who don't like what you are.
-- Eric Holeman

So what are you whining for?  I've never understood that
about Republicans.  Even when they win, they manage to come
off sounding like an oppressed minority.
-- Eric Holeman

This may come as a surprise, but dishing is a
constitutionally protected right.
-- Eric Holeman

The right to be inoffensive to the hetero community is
something y'all can keep for yourselves.
-- Eric Holeman

Hell hath no fury like the drooling of a Republican in
anticipation of an electable Quayle replacement.
-- Eric Holeman

This approach only reinforces stereotypes of drug users as
losers who aren't people until they give up the stuff.
Better by far to take a lesson from the queers and make no
apologies for who you are or what you do.
-- Eric Holeman

[Re Lorraine Day, anti-AIDS bigot] The main question to ask
is why is an orthopaedic surgeon talking about something
that they have not got the specialty training for?
-- G. Wolfe Woodbury
For the same reason that most of the PhDs who speak out for
creationism seem to have PhDs in engineering and for the
same reason that most of the statements on AIDS coming out
of the Reagan administration seemed to come from the
Secretary of Education, not the Surgeon General.  Closed
minds seem to flourish better with lack of information.
-- Eric Nedervold

"Grand ennui" sounds so much nicer than "annoyance."
-- Eric P. Scott

[Disk] quotas are evil; they discourage users from learning
how their greed impacts others.  We're not here to parent
users, we just provide a model electronic ecosystem.  If
they deplete their resources, they become extinct.  A very
simple concept.
-- Eric P. Scott

Our most important 2.1 system has over 86 days continuous
uptime -- and it's only that little because of a power
outage.  But, of course, I'm not the kind of person who goes
around telling people how long I can keep it up for.
-- Eric P. Scott

UNIX is a scrawny kid from New Jersey who became something
of a local hero, but is now middle-aged with a beer gut.
Mach tries to turn modern UNIX into RoboCop; POSIX is an
attempt to make UNIX more attractive to corporate America
with silicone implants and Tammy Fay Bakker's double-parked
Maybelline truck.
-- Eric P. Scott

Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot
better than what we have now.
-- Eric Sheppard

Precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into
uncommon sense.
-- Eric Temple Bell

And remember, rebooting your brain can be tricky.
-- Eric Townsend

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only
at the price of a total detachment, which excludes the
ability to experience happiness.
-- Erich Fromm

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much
destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy
or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
-- Erich Fromm

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a
problem which he has to solve.
-- Erich Fromm

A desire for power over another is due to a perceived lack
of power over oneself.
-- Erich Rickheit

X.400 is the mail system of the future, and I hope it stays
that way.
-- Erik Fair

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing
two men holding guns than holding hands?
-- Ernest Gaines III

Every man's life ends the same way.  It is only the details
of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man
from another.
-- Ernest Hemingway
   "Sunday Times," 1966

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark
Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
-- Ernest Hemingway

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in
the "social sciences" is: some do, some don't.
-- Ernest Rutherford

They call television a medium.  That is because it is
neither rare nor well done.
-- Ernie Kovacs

For an actress to be a success she must have the face of
Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the
memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a
rhinoceros.
-- Ethel Barrymore

Education begins with self-realization.
-- Etienne Navarre

All serious daring starts from within.
-- Eudora Welty

When great changes occur in history, when great principles
are involves, as a rule the majority are wrong.
-- Eugene Debs

Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have
to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough
to think it's important.
-- Eugene McCarthy

I think the problem isn't the amount of knowledge we have to
assimilate in our world, but the rate at which we can
assimilate it.  Science, engineering, and technology do not
yield the "whys" of truth, only the "hows." In fact, they
are not truths, but opinions from the current reigning
theories of how we think the physical world works.
-- Eugene Miya

Science is about skepticism. 
-- Eugene Miya

The best of seers is he who guesses well. 
-- Euripides

To persevere, trusting in what hopes one has, is courage.
The coward despairs.
-- Euripides

Vanilla Ice is a few cubes short of a full tray.
-- Evan Leibovitch

On "outing": Anyone who says, in effect, that *your* private
life is *their* business, had damned well better be prepared
to accept that *their* private life is *your* business.
-- Evelyn Leeper

For practical purposes we have agreed that sanity
consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbors.
-- Evelyn Underhill

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us,
but for ours to amuse them.
-- Evelyn Waugh

If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump to
safety, but if you put that same frog in a pot of cold water
and turn on the heat, it will stay and be scalded to death.
-- Everett Dirksen

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up
to real money.
-- Everett Dirksen

Equality is not when a female Einstein gets promoted to
assistant professor; equality is when a female schlemiel
moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel.
-- Ewald Nyquist

Real education must be limited to men who *insist* on
knowing.  The rest is mere sheep-herding.
-- Ezra Pound

It looks like I'm about to start going steady with someone
whose body metal weighs more than he does.
-- Roger Phillips
You've started dating a mouse on a leash?
-- FJ van Wingerde

[Of Miss Joan Crawford:] What I noticed was that she looked
so _totally_ _terrified_.  She was using every technique she
had to keep calm and project togetherness, but the way she
stared into the camera...like a bunny in a headlight seconds
before being run over.
-- FJ van Wingerde

What kind of software solutions does the Devil- mountain
provide, anyway?  Object-oriented Cobol?"
-- FJ van Wingerde

To me home is not rooms and places.  It is the people I want
to be with.
-- FJ van Wingerde

Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to
investigate.
-- F.M. Knowles

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to
recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- F.P. Jones

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist, but in
the ability to start over.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but
she did it backwards and in high heels.
-- Faith Whittlesey

Bless you my children. Go and sin lots more.
-- Father Amelia

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to
others.
-- Fedor Dostoevsky

[Of an unknown problem] Will try anything, from burning
the hairs of a frog in a stone soup to drying an ice
cube with a hot towel ... if you just tell me that might
work.
-- Fernando Cabral

And the Lord God said unto Moses -- and correctly, I believe
...
-- Field Marshal Montgomery
   opening a chapel service

The writer should never be ashamed of staring.
-- Flannery O'Connor

There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by
a good teacher.
-- Flannery O'Connor

I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing
fiction is an escape from reality.  It is a plunge into
reality and it's very shocking to the system.
-- Flannery O'Connor

You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few
nickels in the machine.
-- Flip Wilson

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
-- Florynce Kennedy

Humility is no substitute for a good personality.
-- Fran Lebowitz

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
-- Fran Lebowitz

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he
is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
-- Francis Bacon

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when
they can see nothing but sea.
-- Francis Bacon

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men
shall pass for wise.
-- Francis Bacon

All rising to great place is by winding stair.
-- Francis Bacon

There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.
-- Francis Bacon

All colors agree in the dark. 
-- Francis Bacon

For what a man would like to to be true, that he more
readily believes.
-- Francis Bacon

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
-- Francis Bacon

If something goes wrong, it is more important to talk about
who is going to fix it, than who is to blame.
-- Francis J. Gable

Old people like to give good advice, as solace for no longer
being able to provide bad examples.
-- Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld
   "Maxims" 1665

The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you
realize it is your move.
-- Frank Crane

I'm sorry that your gay friends were shallow.  Yet, if your
conversations are anything like your posts, its no wonder
that more thoughtful people won't spend time with you.  I'm
not encouraged that any of this will change your mind.
Perhaps your ignorance is invincible.
-- Frank Elliott

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of
Christianity.
-- Frank Harris

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.
-- Frank Herbert
   "Dune," 1965

TV is chewing gum for the eyes. 
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

As I used to tell my Shakespeare classes, the task before us
is not to make Shakespeare relevant to us, but rather to
make ourselves relevant to Shakespeare.
-- Frank Maloney

He dumped me when I came out to him, and not on to him, I
hasten to add, although in retrospect that might have the
reason.  He's the only friend who's ever openly rejected me
because I'm queer, and I have no intention of ever getting
over it.
-- Frank Maloney

I have recently heard it posited that the cold father and
warm mother (which describes my family rather well) are not
so much the cause of a homosexual child as the *result*
thereof.  That is, the parents can sense somehow the
differentness of the child and respond in those ways.
-- Jeff Putnam
Gee, no wonder you're queer.  My parents were pretty much
always the same temperature, as far as I could tell.
-- Frank Maloney

I just had a vision of the scene at Seattle-Tacoma
International Airport as plane-load after plane-load of
bath-crazed females crowd into the concourses and espresso
bars, their overnight bags, panniers, rucksacks, and fanny
packs rubbing and scrapping, creating a harsh continuo in
counterpoint the higher-pitched murmurings, laughter, and
occasional shrieks as would-be bathers compete for taxis and
creme rinse.  Finally, amidst the confused jostlings, a new
sense of purpose, of unity, of solidarity begins to ignite
this batho-phrenetic congeries into a bath-talion that makes
its motto "Fuck it, let's get wet, let's get going." They
form their orderly ranks and swing out onto passenger
loading zones where they commandeer every bus, airporter,
shuttle, and limousine in sight to begin the final stage of
the final assault.  At this point, the vision faded as an
unexpected guest was admitted to my presence.
-- Frank Maloney

In my sensitive and caring way, let me respond by suggesting
you take it to the anti-abortion and homophobic manipulators
and power-mongers.  They are the ones who have succeeded in
putting such a negative spin on the phrase as to make it a
universally recognized code phrase for some of the ugliest
aspects of American political and social life today.  They
are the slanderers, the liars, the power hungry cynics.
-- Frank Maloney

A lot of gay people do find ways to make their own families
because the ones they were born into so totally failed them.
These people are the harbingers of the next norm for
families -- people connected to each other because they love
each other, a "new innovation" if ever there were one.
-- Frank Maloney

And as for good old-fashioned family values, let us see
these folks living three generations in a house before we
talk traditional family values.  This cockamamie fantasy
with the daddy and the mommy and the child living by
themselves is more a by-blow of the disintegrative shock the
industrialization of America brought with it than anything
else.
-- Frank Maloney

Now, sit down, shut up, and do your fucking praying in
private, like your shitting.
-- Frank Maloney

A sudden down-draught reminds you of gravity and your
position in respect to human love.
-- Frank O'Hara

[Moronic fundamentalist Bible-thumping deleted.]
I will answer no flames or mockers. -- David
God didn't write the Bible, you pathetic mindless dickbrain;
a bunch of tight-assed patriarchal control freaks *just like
you* wrote the Bible.
-- Frank Swilling

Every story like Sim's reminds me that the Republican Right
is living in complete and total denial of anything *I*
recognize as reality when they talk about "Traditional
Family Values," which means that a significant portion of
our voting population is living under the same delusions,
since it/they/we keep electing these people to office.  If
enough of these "Shocking True Tales From a Real Live
Family" keep getting in our faces and forcing us to pay
attention, we the people might start tuning in to a very
different picture of "Traditional Family Values" in the USA.
-- Frank Swilling

Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing
people who can't talk for people who can't read.
-- Frank Zappa

Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them
on the ass.
-- Frank Zappa

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will
agree with you only if they already agree with you.  You do
not change people's minds.
-- Frank Zappa

Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe.
-- Frank Zappa

Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and
bending over.
-- Frank Zappa

Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy
but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an
"inconvenience." We have opted instead for an authoritarian
system *disguised* as a Democracy.  We pay through the nose
for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around,
and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.
-- Frank Zappa

Do what you wanna, do what you will;/ Just don't mess up
your neighbor's thrill./ And when you pay the bill, kindly
leave a little tip/ To help the next poor sucker on his
one-way trip.
-- Frank Zappa
   "You Are What You Is"

If it sounds GOOD to YOU, it's bitchen; and if it sounds BAD
to YOU, it's shitty.
-- Frank Zappa

Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not
Wisdom; Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is
not love; Love is not music; Music is the best.
-- Frank Zappa

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
-- Franz Kafka

The meaning of life is that it stops. 
-- Franz Kafka

We must have books which come upon us like ill fortune and
distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better
than ourselves ...  A book must be an ice axe to break the
sea frozen inside us.
-- Franz Kafka

I have just returned from Boston.  It is the only thing to
do if you find yourself up there.
-- Fred Allen

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be
drawn and quoted.
-- Fred Allen

I love long walks, especially when they are taken by people
who annoy me.
-- Fred Allen

Please...  there is a 'u' after every 'q' in French.  (Well,
almost; the exceptions are 'cinq', 'iraqien', 'coq' -- five
Iraqi cocks.)
-- Frederic Maffray

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and
lightning.  They want the ocean without the roar of its many
waters.
-- Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.  Those who
profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are
people who want crops without ploughing the ground.
-- Frederick Douglass

My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfies us
both.  They are to say what they please, and I am to do what
I please.
-- Frederick the Great

When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my
mother for an act of collective brutality in which I had
been involved at school.  A group of seven-year-olds had
been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old.  "It is always
so," my mother said.  "You do things together which not one
of you would think of doing alone." ...  Wherever one looks
in the world of human organization, collective
responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards.  The
military establishment is an extreme case, an organization
which seems to have been expressly designed to make it
possible for people to do things together which nobody in
his right mind would do alone.
-- Freeman Dyson
   "Weapons and Hope"

After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
-- Freeman Dyson

Committees do harm merely by existing. 
-- Freeman Dyson

The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its
diseases is called man.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any
single realized joy could be.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity poisoned Eros, but Eros did not die, it merely
degenerated into a vice.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live
proudly.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

He who does not *want* to see what is elevated in a man
looks all the more keenly for what is low and foreground in
him -- and thereby gives himself away.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason
that his memory is too good.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Insanity is the exception in individuals.  In groups,
parties, people, and times, it is the rule. 
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great
intrinsic depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge
for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret,
subterranean, *petty* -- I call it the *one* mortal blemish
of mankind.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into
contact with reality at any point.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit
that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their
sakes
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

A historian is a prophet in reverse.
-- Friedrich von Schlegel

Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone.
-- G.B. Stearn

The transgression does not deny the taboo but transcends it
and completes it. 
-- G. Bataille

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G.K. Chesterton

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it
was put up.
-- G.K. Chesterton

"My country right or wrong" is like saying, "My mother drunk
or sober."
-- G.K. Chesterton

Unfortunately we find systems of education today that have
departed so far from the plain truth, that they now teach us
to be proud of what we know and ashamed of ignorance.  This
is doubly corrupt.  It is corrupt not only because pride is
in itself a mortal sin, but also because to teach pride in
knowledge is to put up an effective barrier against any
advance upon what is already known, since it makes one
ashamed to look beyond the bonds imposed by one's ignorance.
-- G. Spencer Brown

No creo en Dios, pero le tengo miedo.  (I don't believe in
God, but I'm afraid of Him.)
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
   "El Amor en los Tiempos de Colera," 1985

El que espera lo mucho espera lo poco.  (He who expects much
can expect little.)
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed
us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to
forgo their use.
-- Galileo

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the
intelligence.  There's a knob called "brightness," but it
doesn't work.
-- Gallagher

They ought to make butt-flavored cat food. 
-- Gallagher

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut
stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us
wonder at the possibility that there may be something to
them we are missing.
-- Gamel Abdel Nasser

It's summer and some people head for the woods./ Canoe wild
streams to show they've got the goods,/ Hiking and biking
and running outdoors;/ I think I'll just go out and lie on
my porch.
-- Garrison Keillor

Give me two pillows and a bottle of Pabst./ I once was a
traveller, but my interest lapsed./ I went thousands of
miles, natives to see./ They were sitting on porches,
laughing at me.
-- Garrison Keillor

The Second Violins never practice because their parts are so
easy.  Instead they spend their time in singles bars, dancing
with computer software salesmen.
-- Garrison Keillor

If the church put in half the time on covetousness that it
does on lust, this would be a better world.
-- Garrison Keillor
   "Lake Wobegon Days"

People become addicted to simple explanations of why they're
monsters.
-- Gary Indiana
   "Horse Crazy"

The real sex of our time is fame and money.
-- Gary Indiana
   "Horse Crazy"

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic
of Western religion, rejection without proof is the
fundamental characteristic of Western science.
-- Gary Zukav
   "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"

When the flower of love has died and time has healed the
pain of its passing we are left with warm memories of its
beauty.
-- Gavin I. Barrie

Even if complaints about man-bashing in this film were 99%
true, it still wouldn't make up for the years of portraying
women as bimbos in movies.
-- Geena Davis
   about "Thelma & Louise"

Never tell people how to do things; tell them what to do and
they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
-- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-- Gen. Omar N. Bradley

[A test for biological queerness: suppose] You pass with
flying colours.  You are a certifiable Flaming Queer.  Your
lover does not pass at all.  There is no evidence for her or
his homosexuality, except for the fact that she or he has
been your glorious lover for a number of years.  What are
you going to do?  Pitch your relationship because it doesn't
pass this test?
-- Laura Creighton
Not at all.  You go out and get a grant, do a pilot study,
present a paper at an internationally attended conference,
get tenure, and buy a house.  You and your lover move in and
raise cats together.
-- Gene Smith

Alan, Melmon, and I have formed the Anti-Cabal, the force of
Good to balance the Evil Cabal.  The forces of Good will
endeavor to provide Order in the Universe, so be forewarned.
-- Bob Sarver 
Thanks, but I already saw the Republican convention.
-- Gene Smith

Yes, all problems can be solved with science.  In fact, I
would go so far as to say that problems can only be
guaranteed to be solved by science.
-- Brian Evans
Fine.  I propose the following problem: write a poem in the
manner of the French Symbolists.  Use the scientific method.
-- Gene Smith

Remember, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and to be
forearmed is to be half octopus.
-- Gene Smith

I have seen explicitly homophobic reactions to the idea that
this distaste is characterized by a word whose roots refer
to fear.  "Me?  Afraid of those queers?  Don't make me
laugh." Or perhaps they don't like or haven't grasped the
idea that at bottom what they are afraid of, or dislike, is
something within them.
-- Gene Smith

I really wonder about this planet.  I wonder why straight
people are so threatened by gay people.  I wonder why so
many people feel threatened by the idea that Plato's parable
of the cave is very apt, and that what they think of as
"reality" is two-dimensional.  Are these two kinds of
prejudice that different?  In both I see people attacking
what they in no way understand, but claim to.  Why this
constant barrage of hatred, contempt, derision?  What harm
have I done to others, quietly introspecting in the dark
silence of my apartment, late at night?
-- Gene Smith

I always used to wonder why the pope wore drag.
-- Tom Farrell
Who cares, as long as he looks faaabulous?!
-- Gene Smith

In closing, I'd like to repost my 3 axioms of Usenet.
I originally posted these in 1987 and 1988.  In my opinion
as a semi-pro curmudgeon, I think they've aged well:

Axiom #1:
  "The Usenet is not the real world.  The Usenet usually
  does not even  resemble the real world."
Corollary #1:
  "Attempts to change the real world by altering the
  structure of the Usenet is an attempt to work sympathetic
  magic -- electronic voodoo."
Corollary #2:
  "Arguing about the significance of newsgroup names and
  their  relation to the way people really think is equivalent
  to arguing  whether it is better to read tea leaves or
  chicken entrails to divine the future."
Axiom #2:
 "Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of
 sanity, intelligence, or common sense."
Corollary #3:
  "An infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of
  keyboards  could produce something like Usenet."
Corollary #4:
  "They could do a better job of it."
Axiom #3:
  "Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to
  Usenet."
Corollary #5:
  "In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree on what
  constitutes the 10%."
Corollary #6:
  "Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap, too."

Which of course ties in to the recent (1992):
  "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with
  diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring,
  entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of
  excrement when you least expect it."
-- Gene Spafford

Don't sweat it -- it's not real life.  It's only ones and
zeroes.
-- Gene Spafford

For many a man so hard is of his herte,/ He may nat wepe
al-thogh him sore smerte./ Therefore, in stede of weping and
preyeres,/ Men moot yeve silver to the povre freres.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
   "Canterbury Tales"

Just as hypocritical is your happy claim that Church X has
been treating gays nicely for 3 years -- and your absolute
refusal to deal with Church Y, which has been murdering us
for 2,000 years.  "Oh, but they weren't really Christians."
Tell it to the Marines.
-- Geoffrey Puterbaugh

The living need charity more than the dead.
-- George Arnold

Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good
enough for established institutions as well as those who are
too good for them.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of
conversation but not the power of speech.
-- George Bernard Shaw

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend
on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw

I loathe nothing more than the commonplace that the truth
always lies between the two extremes (truth being quite the
most extreme thing I know of).
-- George Bernard Shaw

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic
concerning it.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he
read made him mad.
-- George Bernard Shaw

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius
should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to
outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and
generally to scandalize one's uncles.
-- George Bernard Shaw

I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished
one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed
by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship.
I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front
and not behind.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no
better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry.  Hence University
education.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Life is not a "brief candle." It is a splendid torch that I
want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it
on to future generations.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.
-- George Bernard Shaw

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth
flattering.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Gambling promises for the poor what property performs for
the rich: something for nothing.
-- George Bernard Shaw

When two people are under the influence of the most violent,
most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions,
they are required to swear that they will remain in that
excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously
until death do them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he
always declares that it is his duty.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The power of accurate observation is commonly called
cynicism by those who have not got it.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for
the appointment by the corrupt few. 
-- George Bernard Shaw

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a
long one instead. 
-- George Bernard Shaw

He believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a
man who does not understand them.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable
man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby
a man without originality or moral courage.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves
about are any less real and true than the things they behave
sensibly about?
-- George Bernard Shaw

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them
and keep them up to date.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. 
-- George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without
ability.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Success covers a multitude of blunders.
-- George Bernard Shaw

We love your adherence to democratic principles.
-- George Bush
   speaking to Ferdinand Marcos, June 1981

America's freedom is the example to which the world expires.
-- George Bush

I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens,
nor should they be considered patriots.  This is one nation
under God.
-- George Bush
   "Free Inquiry" magazine, fall 1988

Those who know the least obey the best.
-- George Farquhar

Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse
talent for taking the wrong side on the most important
concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the
solar system to the origin of man.
-- George Gaylord Simpson

Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they
succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial
men.
-- George Jean Nathan

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
-- George Jean Nathan

Patriotism is an arbitrary veneration of real estate above
principles.
-- George Jean Nathan

Mind you, I would never admit I was a Christian in Christian
company in that I do not believe Christ was crucified
between two candles in a cathedral -- He was crucified
between two thieves on a pile of garbage.
-- George Macleod
   founder of the Iowa Community

Honesty in politics is much like oxygen.  The higher up you
go, the scarcer it becomes.
-- George Madison

Now, in the Overall Schema Of The Universe, I would imagine
that this sort of thing ranks somewhere down around gnat's
eyelashes.
-- George Madison

For the record, possessing a central nervous system doesn't
necessarily make you a sentient being.
-- Gary Byma
No, but it's an essential first step.
-- George Madison

Cynics are only happy in making the world as barren for
others as they have made it for themselves.
-- George Meredith

Warning: The American "melting pot" is filled with bleach.
-- George Neville-Neil

(Of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft's generic human symbols:) At
any rate by the time anything finds it we'll probably be so
much cosmic dust.  Remember Ozymandius King of Kings.
-- George Neville-Neil

If something makes you uncomfortable then don't do it.  No
one asked you to piss on them, or have sex with a fifteen
year old.
-- George Neville-Neil

Life's weird, that's why I'm sticking around till the end. 
-- George Neville-Neil

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
-- George Orwell

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good
and not quite all the time.
-- George Orwell
   "Collected Essays"

Who controls the past controls the future.  Who controls the
present controls the past.
-- George Orwell
   "1984," 1948

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of
solidity to pure wind.
-- George Orwell

If large numbers of people believe in free speech, there
will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it.  But
if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will
be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
-- George Orwell

The fight against bad English is not frivolous and it is not
the exclusive concern of professional writers.
-- George Orwell

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an
arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
-- George Santayana

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its
function is to make the worse appear the better.
-- George Santayana

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too
readily.
-- George Santayana

Sanity is a madness put to good uses, waking life is a
dream controlled. 
-- George Santayana

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have
forgotten your aim.
-- George Santayana

The United States is in no sense based on Christian
doctrine. 
-- George Washington

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force!
It is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.
-- George Washington

Our Constitution ... gives to bigotry no sanction.
-- George Washington

We always believe our first love is our last, and our last
love our first.
-- George Whyte-Melville

The painter knows things by sight; the writer, who knows
them by name, profits by a prejudice in his favor.
-- Georges Braque

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has
gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the
usual interval of civilization.
-- Georges Clemenceau
   1 December 1945

Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're
told.
-- Gerald Barry

Evolution is what it is.  The upper classes have always
died out; it's one of the most charming things about them.
-- Germaine Greer

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really
very frightening.
-- Gertrude Stein

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the
world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy,
which produces real hatred of mankind.
-- Giacomo Leopardi

A technique is a trick that works.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis
or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to
everyone.
-- Gloria Steinem

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
-- Gloria Steinem

Don't be humble, you're not that great. 
-- Golda Meir

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon
the wall instead of using it.
-- Gordon R. Dickson

Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness.  Given
the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose
success.
-- Gordon Summer
   (Sting), 1980

For all the bottom men in the world, I just want to say,
we're definitely doing a lot more than just lying there!
-- Gordy Sheer
   member USA two-man luge team

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that
they're scraping the top of the barrel.
-- Gore Vidal

It makes no difference who you vote for -- the two parties
are really one party representing four percent of the
people.
-- Gore Vidal

Capote should be heard, not read.
-- Gore Vidal

Truman Capote has made lying an art.  A *minor* art.
-- Gore Vidal

These presidential ninnies should stick to throwing out
baseballs and leave the important matters to serious people.
-- Gore Vidal

I'm a born again atheist. 
-- Gore Vidal

There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the
Reagans mean to say it all.
-- Gore Vidal
   "The Observer," 1981

Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art.
-- Gore Vidal

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact,
however suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no
matter how true.
-- Gore Vidal

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the master of the arts and the origin
of marvels.
-- Goya

It's important to study and understand what the nazis did in
addition to trying to exterminate Jewish people.  They also
had an entire anti-feminist program, they appealed to
"aryan" folk culture, they outlawed abortion, they were
violently anti-queer, they promoted "family values", they
hated immigrants, they lashed out against "obscenity", they
banned artwork, and the list goes on.  The funny thing is,
most of those things are also currently on the right-wing
agenda in the U.S.  Gee, I wonder why?
-- Graham Herrick

The "men's movement" seems to be extremely reactionary to
me.  Some men feel threatened by women asserting themselves --
they can't handle it.  They've controlled women for so long
that even the very small gains that women made in the 70s
frighten them to the core.  So they all have to get together
and reassert their specific gender-role construction, i.e.,
masculinity (read: power).  They do this by appealing to the
so-called "inner" roots of that socially-constructed gender.
They appeal to the "warrior within," etc.  Combine this
movement with the rise of the Christian rightists and the
skinheads, and the neo-fascists, and the family-values
people and all the other right-wing folks running around
these days and you have a strong movement there for pushing
the U.S.  even further toward fascism.  Of course Robert Bly
would not overtly talk about Nazism.  Very few of these
people do.  The family-values types don't, the Christian
fundis don't.  Many rightists in the U.S.  today don't know
how similar they are to the Nazi propagandists.  They are
simply reacting to a perceived (and delusionary) threat --
but that's exactly what fascism and reactionary right-wing
ideology are about!  I think George Orwell said: when
fascism comes to the U.S.  it will be on a program of
Americanism.
-- Graham Herrick

Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as
conscious selection.  We will civilize and alter ourselves
to suit our ideas of what we can be.  Within one more human
lifespan, we will have changed ourselves unrecognizably.
-- Greg Bear

There was this weird little weasly kid I went to elementary
school with.  If there was a fight he would hang around and
if one or the other of the participants got pinned or held
down this kid would leap in and kick him a few times and
then run away shrieking as he was chased home.  Anyone can
get attention, but it doesn't ever really satisfy the need
for respect.
-- Greg Parkinson

[Of Matthew Melmon] You're behaving like the net equivalent
of a whoopee cushion, giggling wildly every time you make
the written equivalent of fart noises.
-- Greg Parkinson

Emotional complexity can be enjoyed, reveled in, and is
better served by acceptance and attention than by analysis.
-- Greg Parkinson

And if you all stopped listening to me, well then I'd just
have to skulk somewhere else.
-- Matthew Melmon
I say we give it a try.
-- Greg Parkinson

I think I'll go someplace where I can find *intelligent*
conversation....
-- Alan Williams
Stop teasing like this!  We know you love the attention you
get here!  Fess up -- you're a soc.motss abuse bottom and
you know it!
-- Greg Parkinson

Or if you are listening to the dialog inside a limo circa,
maybe, 1985, parked (with the engine running) in Manhattan's
meat market district, where the "Mari Sisters (Mariposa y
Maricona)" are entertaining a group of soviet diplomats:

"Oye, mujer!" Maricona exclaims, spitting out a half-chewed
mouthful and fluttering a long-nailed hand in Mariposa's
direction.  "Que, mi vida?" answers Mariposa, her hand
replacing her mouth in pleasuring the groaning man slumped
down in the seat.  "Oye, cojalo este esandawich de queso, el
samovar esta explotando.  Mira, mira, chico, mi vestido
nuevo!  Joder!" Mariposa looks over, eyes wide, and exclaims
"Aye, como las cataratas de niagara!"
-- Greg Parkinson

I get *tired* of being told to politely ask for my rights
from people who didn't have the right to take them away in
the first place.
-- Greg Parkinson

I *am* a pretty uppity faggot.  I am disgusted by queers who
dance a jig of joy at each crumb we are tossed by our
oppressors while chanting "forgive us our sinful play,
pragmatism is the only way, they like us more *every* day!"
-- Greg Parkinson

I was saying "I am a man and this is how I am acting".  All
my fears about being "too effeminate" exploded into a frenzy
of stereotypical effeminate display and behavior.  I could
play the sex role game with their pieces and scare the shit
out of them.  You want big tits?  I got 'em.  Now bend over,
asshole.
-- Greg Parkinson

Like this is like deja, totally vu!
-- Greg Parkinson

If you can't ask your friends to help you with shopping,
they really aren't your friends.
-- Greg Parkinson

I knew someone who argued like you when I was in High
School.  He didn't have any friends.  He grew up, though, and
last I heard he was a pleasant, rational person.  Maybe he
can give classes.
-- Greg Parkinson

But what about dogs that hump people?  Are they gay dogs,
or -- humanists?
-- Greg Parkinson

Evolution gave us brains to create language; the next step
is to be able to use it.
-- Greg Parkinson

It is so ironic how someone can preach fundamental and moral
love for God and of God, but go around and despise those who
are not "morally" correct.  -- (someone)
It is not ironic at all.  A person who can believe in some
particular form of God is capable of believing anything.  If
such a person likes homosexuals, then they will assert that
homosexuality is moral.  If such a person finds
homosexuality distasteful, then they will assert that
homosexuality is immoral.  Such people think with their
intestines.  What they intuit they assert to be true.  If
they happen to intuit nice things, they are still dangerous;
a bad night's sleep and they could just as well intuit
ethnic cleansing.  Zero-integrity thought is no less
dangerous for being momentarily without an explicit threat.
-- Greg Weeks

I could be happy now.  From my seat in the airplane I could
imagine the full enclosures of people contented and with no
needs beyond private moments walking the fenceline before
joining the others in the night enclosure that is the final
shape of countries
-- Gregory Taylor

The world exhausts everything except my eyes because it is a
long walk to the world begun before I was born.  In the far
corner the dead woman bows off stage.  The television
crumples into a white dot as the last train of the evening,
my train, is announced.  I lived in one place.  I want to
die in another.
-- Gregory Taylor

These things slip from the rail of a long terrace.  They
fall to the street and past it, into the river.  And inside
me, the airship lifts and swells and people in
turn-of-the-century costume laugh with amazement as the
loose stonework and our lives fall as the airship rises.
-- Gregory Taylor

In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians,
and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
-- Groucho Marx

Military justice is to justice what military music is to
music.
-- Groucho Marx

Those are my principles.  If you don't like them I have
others.
-- Groucho Marx

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a
dog, it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels
with another must wait until that other is ready.
-- H.D. Thoreau

Men have become the tools of their tools. 
-- H.D. Thoreau

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
-- H.D. Thoreau

Being is the greatest explainer. 
-- H.D. Thoreau

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their
relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
-- H.D. Thoreau

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so
much as for the right.
-- H.D. Thoreau

How does it become a man to behave toward this American
government today?  I answered that he cannot without
disgrace be associated with it.
-- H.D. Thoreau

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance,
nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
-- H.D. Thoreau

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority
of one.
-- H.D. Thoreau

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
-- H.D. Thoreau

I was not born to be forced.  I will breathe after my
own fashion.  If a plant cannot live according to its
nature, it dies; and so a man.
-- H.D. Thoreau

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. 
-- H.G. Wells

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is
suspicious.
-- H.L. Mencken

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness
to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
-- H.L. Mencken

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his
hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
-- H.L. Mencken

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in
the palpably not true.  It is the chief occupation of
mankind.
-- H.L. Mencken

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells
better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make
better soup.
-- H.L. Mencken

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet
keep both ears to the ground.
-- H.L. Mencken

The American public knows what it wants, and deserves to get
it good and hard.
-- H.L. Mencken

There's always an easy solution to every human problem --
neat, plausible, and wrong.
-- H.L. Mencken

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is
actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to
be exposed.
-- H.L. Mencken
   "Prejudices, Third Series," 1922

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone
might be looking.
-- H.L. Mencken
   "A Mencken Chrestomathy," 1949

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from
the monkey cage.
-- H.L. Mencken

A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United
States than he could be elected Pope of Rome.  Both high
posts are reserved for men favored by God with an
extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life
in bandages of self-illusion.
-- H.L. Mencken

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the
American public.
-- H.L. Mencken

When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of
reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?"
Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"
-- H.L.Mencken

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who
is always dull.
-- H.L. Mencken

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the
occurrence of the improbable.
-- H.L. Mencken

The notion that science does not concern itself with first
causes -- that it leaves the field to theology or
metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects -- this
notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at
once--and there is every reason to believe that it will do
so on some not too remote tomorrow.  To argue that gaps in
knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not
by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is
simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous
dignity.
-- H.L. Mencken

Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation
trembled under his roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the
Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who
belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the
railroad yards.
-- H.L. Mencken
   writing of William Jennings Bryan

The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
-- H.L. Mencken

Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as
baseball in Italian.
-- H.L. Mencken

Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and
stuffed.
-- H.W. Beecher

I have come to think that the great are characterized
precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that
their heroism consists in holding to that extremity
throughout their lives.
-- Hadrian
   "Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on
with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
-- Hal Borland

Dammit, we're all going to die, let's die doing something
*useful*!
-- Hal Clement
   on comments that space exploration is dangerous

In a recent issue of "Granta," Hanif Kureishi, author of "My
Beautiful Launderette," describes his family's reaction to
the film: "I receive a letter from an aunt who lives in the
north of England.  After seeing Launderette, she frequently
rings my father.  'Can't you control the little bastard?'
she asks him.  'Humiliating us in public!  Suppose people
find out I'm related to him!'" Her letter: I tried to phone
you, but I believe you were in the USA boring the pants off
the Americans with your pornography ...  Worst of all the
film was offensive to your father's distinguished family.
Uncle was portrayed in a very bad light, drunk in bed with
his bottle of vodka and uncut toenails ...  This was totally
uncalled for and mischievous.  It only brings to light your
complete lack of loyalty, integrity and compassion ...  We
didn't know you were a 'poofter'.  We do hope you're aware
of AIDS and its dangers; if not, then a medical leaflet can
be sent to you.  Why oh why do you have to promote the
widely held view of the British that all evil stems from
Pakistani immigrants?  Thank goodness for top-quality films
like 'Gandhi.'"
-- Hanif Kureishi

Solitude is being with oneself.  Loneliness is being with no
one.
-- Hannah Arendt

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which,
when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still
more complicated.
-- Hannah Arendt

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take
your eyes off the goal.
-- Hannah More

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary
so that the necessary may speak.
-- Hans Hoffman

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing
but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.
-- Harlan Ellison

You people veer dangerously close to sanity.  But
fortunately you never quite make it all the way there.
-- Harlan Ellison
   on MIT

The two most common elements in the Universe are hydrogen
and stupidity. 
-- Harlan Ellison

Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion.
-- Harlan Ellison

The meaning of a poem can only be another poem.
-- Harold Bloom

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others
by their acts.
-- Harold Nicolson

Here's an interesting thought from the book: "The
Destruction of the European Jews" by Raul Hilber:
"The Nazi destruction process did not come out of a void; it
was the culmination of a cyclic trend.  We have observed the
trend in the three successive goals of anti-Jewish
administrators.  The missionaries of Christianity had said in
effect: you have no right to live among us as Jews.  The
secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: you have no
right to live among us.  The German Nazis at last decreed:
you have no right to live.
"These progressively more dramatic goals brought in their
wakes a slow and steady growth of anti-Jewish action and
anti-Jewish thinking.  The process began with the attempt to
drive the Jews into Christianity.  The development was
continued in order to force the victims into exile.  It was
finished when the Jews were driven to their deaths.  The
German Nazis, then, did not discard the past; they built
upon it.  They did not begin a development; they completed
it."
Looking at this from a different angle:
(1) You have no right to live among us as gays:
    America is a Christian republic, not a democracy.
    -- Howard Philips (1992 address to the National Affairs
       Briefing)
    There is a religious war occurring in this nation.
    -- Pat Buchanan
(2) You have no right to live among us:
    Mr. Mabon [director of the conservative group
    sponsoring Oregon's Ballot Measures 9 initiative] said
    the measure was not to have a witch hunt but rather "To
    simply state that it is the government's position that
    homosexuality is abnormal and wrong."  He acknowledges
    that the measure would discriminate against gays, giving
    landlords the right to evict gay tenants, or employers
    the right to dismiss gays.
    -- New York News Service article "Anti-gay measure on
       ballot in Oregon"
(3) You have no right to live:
    Oh, but we're too progressive to let something like that
    happen again!  Aren't we?
-- Harry Foster

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who
gets the credit.
-- Harry S Truman

One of the important changes in the gay/lesbian movement in
the eighties and nineties has been activists' realization
that it is (1) hopeless and (2) self-defeating to expend
energy on trying to get *them* to like *us*.  The irrational
hatred of gay people already exists and will continue to
exist no matter how polite or well-mannered we may be.  That
is the nature of bigotry!  In the 90s ACT-UP is a reason to
dislike gayfolk; in the 70s free love was a reason; in the
50s child molestation and communism were reasons.  Every
decade has its own rationalization and no amount of
Uncle-Tomming will remove the underlying hate.
-- Harvey Cohen

IQ describes how big your gas tank is, but it doesn't tell
if you're running on empty.
-- Harvey Newstrom

In view of what everybody knows of the vile influence on
society of the intersexual [heterosexual] passion, as it
actually exists in the world, making men and women sensual,
low-minded, false, every way unprincipled and grossly
selfish, and this especially in those nations which
self-righteously reject homosexual love, it seems a travesty
of morality to invest the one with divine attributes and
denounce the other as infamous and unnatural.
-- Havelock Ellis
   and John Addington Symonds, "Letter from
   Professor X," _Sexual Inversion_ (1897)

What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of
command.
-- Havelock Ellis
   "The Dance of Life," 1923

It is only the great men who are truly obscene.  If they had
not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be
great.
-- Havelock Ellis

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its
pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz
   "Almanach des lettres francaises"

Nobody's interested in sweetness and light.
-- Hedda Hopper
   on gossip

They kick you when you're down, but if you don't get down
they can't kick you.
-- Heidi Leiter
   high-school student who took her girlfriend to the prom.

Dort, wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch
Menschen.  (Wherever books are burned men also, in the end,
are burned.
-- Heinrich Heine

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are
hanged. 
-- Heinrich Heine

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often
we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the
one which has been opened for us.
-- Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of
the overcoming of it.
-- Helen Keller

College isn't the place to go for ideas.
-- Helen Keller

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my
chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great
and noble.
-- Helen Keller

Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has
found no remedy for the worst of them all--the apathy of
human beings. 
-- Helen Keller

Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in
nature...  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
-- Helen Keller

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to
soar.
-- Helen Keller

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
-- Henri Bergson

If youth but knew; if age but could. 
-- Henri Estienne

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing
what is impossible for talent is genius.
-- Henri-Frederic Amiel
   "Journal," 1883

Religion is the venereal disease of mankind.
-- Henri de Montherlant

One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are
hardly possible.  Friendship needs a certain parallelism of
life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
-- Henry Brook Adams

How easy it is for a man to die rich, if he will but be
contented to live miserable.
-- Henry Fielding

Thinking always of trying to do more brings a state of mind
in which nothing seems impossible.
-- Henry Ford

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
-- Henry J.Kaiser

To take what there *is*, and use it, without waiting forever
in vain for the preconceived -- to dig deep into the actual
and get something out of that -- this doubtless is the right
way to live.
-- Henry James

Be one of those upon whom nothing is lost. 
-- Henry James

The illegal we do immediately.  The unconstitutional takes a
little longer.
-- Henry Kissinger

Even a paranoid can have enemies. 
-- Henry Kissinger

I am one of two things.  I'm either someone who  helps people
or a quack.  Do you understand that? -- (somebody)
At least they were honest ducks ...
-- Henry Mensch

Learn to appreciate what you get; it's all icing on the
sometimes-suboptimal conceptual cake.
-- Henry Mensch

Castro Valley is not a true bedroom community, at least not
like some of the other Bay Area suburbs.  Castro Valley was
a chicken-farming town.
-- Rob Bernardo
For many, this alone would make it a bedroom community.
-- Henry Mensch

After you've expressed an interest and determined that the
lust object at hand has fallen into his beer, you can ask
for a phone number ...  later is better than never
sometimes.
-- Henry Mensch

I think the people who write "no queens" in their ads are
really saying that their home isn't big enough for more than
one queen.
-- Henry Mensch

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous
unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
-- Henry Miller

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of
sacrilege.  What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is,
*different*, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
-- Henry Miller

TCP/IP: handling tomorrow's loads today.  OSI: handling
yesterday's loads someday.
-- Henry Spencer

Oh, by the way, look before you leap.  It's harder than it
looks.
-- Henry Spencer 

Writing novice-friendly documentation is a lot of work.
We'd like to do it someday.  Holding of breath is not
advised.
-- Henry Spencer

A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flaming.
-- Henry Spencer

The average homosexual has between 20 to 106 different
partners per year -- 300 to 500 in a lifetime.  Is that
typical sexual behavior?  -- [some idiot]
The average homosexual also has one breast and one testicle.
Is that typical sexual anatomy?
-- Henry Troup

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not
troubled by great ambitions.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The longer I live, the more I see that I am never wrong
about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly
taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Much learning does not teach understanding. 
-- Heraclitus

There is nothing permanent except change.
-- Heraclitus

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an
even bigger pain the second time around.
-- Herb Caen

Older men declare war.  But it is youth that must fight and
die.
-- Herbert Hoover

A city is a large community where people are lonesome
together.
-- Herbert Prochnow

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for
freedom.
-- Herbert Spencer

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give
you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please
everybody.
-- Herbert Swope

Naturally the common people don't want war ...  but after
all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and
it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.  All
you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger.
-- Hermann Goering

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part
of yourself.  What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb
us.
-- Hermann Hesse

How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth!
Solitude is independence.  It had been my wish and with the
years I had attained it.  It was cold.  Oh, cold enough!
But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the
cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
-- Hermann Hesse

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
-- Herodotus

A liberal is a man who leaves the room when the fight
begins. 
-- Heywood Broun

The standard of intellect in politics is so low that men of
moderate mental capacity have to stoop in order to reach it.
-- Hillaire Belloc

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: "His sins were
scarlet, but his books were read."
-- Hillaire Belloc

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  If I am only for
myself what am I?  And if not now, when?
-- Hillel

The world, especially for the middle and upper classes, is
much more fool-proof then it used to be.  A fool-proof
environment causes an increase in the number of fools.
-- Hillel Gazit

To do nothing is also a good remedy.
-- Hippocrates

The first casualty when war comes is truth.
-- Hiram Johnson
   (U.S. Senate, 1917)

Man is a dog's ideal of what a God should be.
-- Holbrook Jackson

A diploma is a remembrance of things passed. 
-- Honey Greer

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that
devours everything: familiarity.
-- Honore de Balzac
   "The Physiology of Marriage," 1829

Men are so made that they can resist sound argument, and yet
yield to a glance.
-- Honore de Balzac

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
-- Honore de Balzac

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!  (Seize the day,
put no trust in the morrow!)
-- Horace

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while
you're at it.
-- Horace Greeley

I should like my country well enough if it were not for my
countrymen.
-- Horace Walpole

Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
-- Horngren

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas
are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken

Today we learned that Greg Parkinson and Arne Adolfsen
graduated high school the same year that I did.  I believe
Melinda did, too, and Mr. Cr*mer as well.  (A) I think
Jack Hamilton graduated the year before us.  (B) What a
cohort!  It's a bit like saying that Walter Lippmann,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babe Ruth and Clyde Barrow all
frequented the same speakeasy!
-- Howard Faye

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
-- Howard W. Newton

We believe that to err is human.  To blame it on someone
else is politics.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

The right to be heard does not automatically include the
right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to
pose new questions -- which time and mediocrity can solve.
-- Hugh Trevor-Roper
   "Men and Events"

People are always talking about tradition, but they forget
we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and
stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence
and crudity.
-- Hugo Demartini
   "Contemporary Artists," 1977

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the
weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on
heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from
Hollywood to Las Vegas ...  with the music at top volume and
at least a pint of ether.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
   "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone,
but they've always worked for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that
extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a
person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving
"normally."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
   "Fear and Loathing '72"

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

We believe a scientist because he can substantiate his
remarks, not because he is eloquent and forcible in his
enunciation.
-- I.A. Richards
   "Science and Poetry"

Communism is a silly ideology, almost as silly as Mormonism.
-- Ian Shoales

The sexual revolution went too far, informationwise.  When
you find phrases like "suck face" as a euphemism for "kiss"
it sort of takes the zing out of intimate personal contact.
-- Ian Shoales

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
-- Igor Stravinsky

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with
respectability and air conditioning.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka
   "Home," 1966

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the
difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything
has changed.
-- Irene Peter

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken
seriously.
-- Iris Murdoch

What can you say about a society that says God is dead and
Elvis is alive?
-- Irv Kupcinet

My own approach is kindness and common sense.  Whom will you
follow, an angry tyrant or a simple, loving man who speaks
the truth?  What a funny place the world is!  Apparently
many of you have such distrust, fear, and hatred for your
fellow man as to give away your own freedom just to take
away his.
-- Irving Wolfe

It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to
know no science, even though they may be well educated
otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense.

They thus become part of the armies of the night, the
purveyors of nitwittery, the retailers of intellectual junk
food, the feeders on mental cardboard, for their ignorance
keeps them from distinguishing nectar from sewage.
-- Isaac Asimov
   "The Armies of the Night"

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that
heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but
"That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov

Reality isn't all there is, after all. 
-- Isaac Asimov

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that
something is possible, he is almost certainly right.  When
he states that something is impossible, he is very probably
wrong.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
...
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is
denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and
supports that idea with great fervor and emotion--the
distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all,
probably right.
-- Isaac Asimov

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in
people and to be kind to them.  Kindness, I've discovered,
is everything in life.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

God grant me the company of those who seek the truth, and
God deliver me from those who have found it.
-- Isaac Newton

I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore
and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoothe
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-- Isaac Newton

Perhaps he knew as I did not, that the Earth was made round
so that we would not see too far down the road.
-- Isak Dinesen

To my surprise I find out I have a great imagination.
-- Ivana Trump

Moderate reformers always hate those who go beyond them.
-- J.A. Froude

There are men whose enmity is a compliment.
-- J.A. Froude

My father had a memory-resident spell checker for a while.
If the checker couldn't find the word you wanted, it would
tell you the location it would have in another dictionary:
"that would be between blah and blah-de-blah."

Dad, being a mature sort of 65 year-old professor of
Computer Science, asked for the definition of "fuck."

The reply?

"That would be between 'frustration' and 'fulfillment'."

-- J.B. Bell

One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of
youth, is that of Not Going.
-- J.B. Priestley

The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but
queerer than we *can* suppose.
-- J.B.S. Haldane

A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence.
-- J. Brander Matthews

New therapies are on the horizon.  The idea of mixing two
drugs together is showing great promise.  Two drugs which
seem to be the most efficacious are AZT and DDT.
-- J. Danforth Quayle
   while visiting an AIDS Hospice

I would guess that there's adequate low-income housing in
this country.
-- J. Danforth Quayle

You all look like happy campers to me.  Happy campers you
are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am
concerned, happy campers you will always be.
-- J. Danforth Quayle

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
-- J. Danforth Quayle

I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only
regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school
so I could converse with those people.
-- J. Danforth Quayle
   quoted in "Time," 8 May 1989

What a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind.
How true it is.
-- J. Danforth Quayle
   addressing the United Negro College Fund
   quoted in "Time," 26 June 1989

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a
mother and child.
-- J. Danforth Quayle

Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific.
It is IN the Pacific.  It is a part of the United States
that is an island that is right here.
-- J. Danforth Quayle
   Hawaii, Sep 1989

We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the
elimination of human rights.
-- J. Danforth Quayle
   El Salvador, Feb 1989

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in
cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way
obstructed interstate commerce.
-- J. Edgar Hoover

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid
pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still
forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-- J. Greely

Bureaucrat: A person who cuts red tape sideways.
-- J. McCabe

Oh hell, pour me another one a them John Thomases.
-- Roger Phillips
I'll have what he's having.  Make mine a double.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

To many people, liberty has become a property, to be owned
only by those who can buy it or barter for it.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

The strength of the feeling we have, the knowledge that we
have of what men loving men means, does not depend on the
words we use to describe it.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

I think I'll go someplace where I can find *intelligent*
conversation....
-- Alan Williams
<clutch the pearls!>
One does so hate long goodbyes.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

[Duracell Inc., the battery manufacturer, will replace
Texaco as a corporate underwriter of PBS's "Great
Performances" series.] I suddenly have this urge to go out
and buy tons of Duracells...  of course, those other good
batteries that I have lying about might make a good donation
to a local senior center or other such group.
-- Tom Barrett
Why not give them to the Boy Scouts?  They probably need to
replace all their Duracells.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

My opinion is just as important as yours.  No more so,
no less so. -- unknown claimant

That one opinion is just as good as another, that every
statement labeled as an opinion is equally deserving of
consideration, is as specious as the argument that
creationism, being a so-called theory, is as good as the
theory of evolution, which [after all] is *just* another
theory.

In matters of taste, say, what is the best flavor of ice
cream, or who is the absolutely hottest man in the world,
I recognize the province of opinion, and expect that my
opinion may differ from that of others.

When it comes to determining matters of right behavior,
responsibility, morality, or any principle which I use to
shape my life, opinion is not an applicable word.  My
personal tenets are not merely opinions, and the opposing
tenets of another are not a priori as good as mine, since
I believe mine correct, chosen as such after reflection.

I recognize the value of compromise, but I cannot accept
compromise as a way of life, applicable to every contention.
Opinions are amenable to compromise, principles are not.

My principles are not immutable; they are open to
demonstration that they are false, unsupportable, or
contradictory.  However, they will not succumb to dogma or
unthinking arguments, nor are they prey to trumped-up
opinions.  My ethics is open to change by argument, not
attack.

I am without foundation if I believe my principles are
simply opinions.  Without the belief that they are true, I
am lost to the whims of taste.  But I do myself the worst
disservice if I am not willing to reject an unsatisfactory
or false principle.

I accord principles the respect they deserve, and expect
the same.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

When will we learn that freedom is not in finite supply,
that liberty begets liberty?
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

My sexuality has never been more a normal, natural,
everyday part of me than it's become ever since I decided to
give up passing for straight.
-- J.N. Shaumeyer

[On randomly generated sentences.] I think that it is hard
to read such material without amusement.  I feel a little
admiration as well.  I would never write, "It happened one
frosty look of trees waving gracefully against the wall." I
almost wish I could.  Poor poets endlessly rhyme love with
dove, and they are constrained by their highly trained
mediocrity never to write a good line.  In some sense, a
stochastic process can do better; it at least has a chance.
-- J.R. Pierce
   "Symbols, Signals, and Noise"

Not all those who wander are lost. 
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations,
if you live near him.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

There's nothing remarkable about it.  All one has to do is
hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument
plays itself.
-- J.S. Bach

You don't have to be ashamed of your love.  Love covers a
multitude a sins.
-- J.T. Kittredge

None of us consciously intends to benefit strangers, yet
that is the effect of such [libertarian] economic activity.
-- Jack B. Newsbaum

After decades of raging against injustices -- personal and
communal, ephemeral and substantial -- I have come to see
that the more I take on the enemy's passion, the more I
become just like him until finally the shared rage
obliterates any distinction between his cause and mine --
the means becomes the end and we are essentially
indistinguishable in hatred.
-- Jack Carroll

Where will all of the wretchedness end if we cannot refrain
from repeatedly seeking to victimize the victimizer?
-- Jack Carroll

I have small patience with people who attempt to stand on
principles which are smaller than their feet and then
complain when they fall off, but I have no sympathy with
people who attempt to stand on principles when there are
none in sight.
-- Jack Carroll

If we repudiate "religion" and a concern for what is
"sacred" because it is associated with the activities and
cultic paraphernalia of professional religionists we are
denying a very essential part of being human.  Religion is
not about God, it is about us.
-- Jack Carroll

Gay is standard equipment on some models.  Period.
-- Jack Carroll

I'm mixing metaphors here, but the closet is somebody else's
red wagon--I won't kick it over, but I won't pull it either.
-- Jack Carroll

Why should sexual orientation appear on a list of
priorities?  I mean, like everybody's got one.
-- Jack Carroll

I am not looking for a place for my dick, I am looking for a
place for my life.  And that "place" is the whole place.
-- Jack Carroll
   on gay rights

Hug me, flame me, kiss me, kill me...
-- Alan Jaffray
*Hugs*, you dumb bastard <smooches> <stab> <stab> <stab>
-- Brad Shapcott
At last a real breakthrough: nnuff postings!
-- Jack Carroll

If people would only try to *really listen* and *really
think* about what people are saying and feeling there would
be better understanding between all people in the world.
-- Naz Reyes
If people would only try to make themselves clear, consider
how what they say might be perceived by other people, and
eliminate ego from their postings, there would be better
understanding between all people in the world.
-- Jack Hamilton

God, you really are a whiner.  If I mispelled something,
would you also jump on that?
-- Bob Sarver
Maybe he does have a sense of humor after all!
-- Jack Hamilton

Is there something wrong with me?
-- Lawrence Clarke
Yes.  You're letting other people define how you feel.  If
you want to condemn drag queens and leathermen, do it
because you don't like them, not because you're afraid of
what straight people will think.  And what's it to you how
other people dress?  They're not making *you* wear little
leather jockstraps to the grocery.
-- Jack Hamilton

When I'm waiting for a 35 Eureka, endless numbers of 24s
pass me by.  Buses, like other things, come more slowly and
less frequently once they get past 30.
-- Jack Hamilton

If the entire country has only two men and two women left,
then they have to inter-mate their spouses -- if they still
want to continue the existence of human beings.
-- (pkk36438@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu)
I think you could make a good case against inbreeding.  
-- Jack Hamilton

Try to get them out of the bar and into the car.
-- Jack Hamilton

All I can add is this: when darkness closes in and jungle
creatures lurk all around, cats remain unperturbed but
watchful.
-- Brent Capps
Have you thought about entering the turgid prose contest?
Maybe you could win a spell checker.
-- Jack Hamilton

Quick story.  I was walking in Center City, Philadelphia,
bedecked as usual with pink triangles, etc., and a car pulls
up to a stop light.  Window rolls down, redneck type looks
at me.

Redneck:  Howdy, faggot.
Me (quick as can be): Howdy, bigot.
Window rolls up, light changes, he keeps going.
-- Jacob Mattison

We don't love qualities, we love persons, sometimes by
reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
-- Jacques Maritain

AIDS is a virus; *George Bush* is a punishment from God.
-- Jaffe Cohen

To forget all the rules and act naturally is a reward akin
to heaven!
-- Jake Coughlin

And if *I* were standing in front of you you'd be spitting
broken teeth out of your mouth.  Asshole.
-- Mick Washbrook
Oh YEAH?!?  If *you* were standing in front of me, you'd be
bleeding all over your taffeta dress.  Of course, with your
slow delivery, you'd be healed before you woke up.
-- Jake Coughlin


What does ISDN stand for, anyway?
It Still Does Nothing.
-- James A. Gaskin
   "UNIX Today"

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine,
but because people refuse to see it.
-- James A. Michener
   "Space"

The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who
has nothing to lose.
-- James Baldwin

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given, freedom
is something people take.
-- James Baldwin
   "Nobody Knows My Name"

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure
in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
-- James Baldwin
   "Nobody Knows My Name" 1961

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that
in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
-- James Baldwin

The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be
as much alike as possible. 
-- James Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling,
is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin

Too many people are thinking of security instead of
opportunity.  They seem more afraid of life than death.
-- James F. Byrnes

Conform and be dull. 
-- James Frank Dobie

I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of
claiming that I have never made one.
-- James Gordon Bennett

The Arby's in McKinney, TX proudly proclaims on its marquee:
"Only Arby's has chicken three ways."
-- James Hansen

Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious.
-- James Hogan

During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of
Christianity has been upon trial.  What has been its fruits?
More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the
clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
-- James Madison

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes
impossible.
-- James McNeill Whistler

The problem with defending the purity of the English
language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse
whore.  We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has
pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-- James Nicoll

Everyone feels instinctively that all the beautiful
sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely
action.
-- James Russell Lowell

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we
would get somewhere.
-- James Thurber

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
-- James Thurber
   "The Thurber Carnival," 1945

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have
loafed at all.
-- James Thurber

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too
far backwards.
-- James Thurber

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain
dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few
persons.
-- James Thurber

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread -- and the angels
are in heaven, but the fools are not dead.
-- James Thurber

I can do a score of things that can't be done.  I can find a
thing I cannot see, and see a thing I cannot find.  The
first is time, and the second is spots before my eyes.  I
can touch a thing I cannot feel, and feel a thing I cannot
touch.  The first is your heart, and the second is sad and
sorry.
-- James Thurber
   "The Thirteen Clocks"

Wood can stay in the water 20 years and still not be a fish.
-- Jane Yolen

Don't compromise yourself.  You are all you've got.
-- Janis Joplin

When I use the word "breeder," I do not do it to slander
people with children.  I call in question of the societal
requirement of procreation.  I use it defy the notion that
my human worth is measured in the number of offspring I
produce.  I use it defy so-called family values of those who
hold the unborn sacred, but let the living suffer from
hunger, inadequate (or as it is more and more often, no)
health care and place the life of a woman secondary to that
of a mass of cells unable to survive outside the woman's
body.
-- Jari Junikka

I use the word "breeder" to insult people who wrap
themselves in the cloak of heterosexuality in order to show
off the supremacy of their "life style" over mine or use it
as a protection against AIDS.  The breeders of this world
have seen fit to produce offspring, but deny them them a
chance to develop a positive self-image by erasing the lives
of my sisters and brothers from textbooks, school education
in general, media and so on.  So many brothers and sisters
die in vain because the breeders are against safer sex
education, which would "promote promiscuity." I say we
should be promiscuous, we should enjoy sex and stop
breeding.  If our planet is to survive, we need to stop
procreating.
-- Jari Junikka

I don't think our goal in life should be to get through it
without offending people.  Of all the people I respect, I
most value those who have guts to speak the truth, no matter
who it offends or how unpopular it is.
-- Jari Junikka

The idea that people are misinformed, but decent, does not
fly.
-- Jari Junikka

So it's wrong to try to change something what you find
objectionable?  Good luck for getting your civil rights
before the sun cools down.
-- Jari Junikka

The church of my choice is the free, open world.
-- Jason Taverner

Save a tree - kill an ISO working group today.
-- Jason Zions

A man and his son were at a petting zoo.  He called, "Camaro
Neal." "What have you Datsun?" His son replied "Either a
Lamborghini pig.  Just don't get in Volvo-ed." "Nissan to
me, son.  Your Mazda only one who can talk to me like that."
"I'm sorry," his son Saabed.
-- Jay Glover

Love is above all, the gift of oneself. 
-- Jean Anouilh

Tact consists of knowing how far we may go too far.
-- Jean Cocteau

What the public reproaches you for -- cultivate it!  It's
you.
-- Jean Cocteau

Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau

The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that
you've got it made.
-- Jean Giraudoux

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau

Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin-deep.
That's deep enough.  What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
-- Jean Kerr

It is possible to commit no mistakes, and still lose.  That
is not weakness, that is life.
-- Jean-Luc Picard

Man is not the sum total of what he has already, but rather
the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.
-- Jean Paul Sartre

Those who love to be feared, fear to be loved.  Some fear
them, but they fear everyone.
-- Jean Pierre Camus

Most novices picture themselves as masters -- and are
content with the picture.  This is why there are so few
masters.
-- Jean Toomer

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to
complain of its shortness.
-- Jean de La Bruyere

The real issue then is: why does it embarrass us so to find
ourselves associated with, say, men who don't wear sensible
shoes to parades?  My bet is that you worry that these
sights (and typically the subsequent media images) are taken
by straights (who are accorded the power of numbers and
social status) as definitional.  This is what it means to be
gay...  all the time, for everyone.  A key feature of bigoted
thinking is the rigid categorization of people according to
some label.  (All) gay folks are...  (All) lesbians are...
(All) bis are...
-- Jeannine Marie Pinto

Don't require that we all look like Joe and Jane Average
just so that the bigots won't have an evidence to support
their bigotry.  The bigots are going to find their evidence
no matter what we do.
-- Jeannine Marie Pinto

It often seems to me that people --straight and gay-- try to
protect us from homophobia by maintaining our closets for
us.  I don't want that.  I want them to turn their energies
to the 'phobes.
-- Jeannine Marie Pinto

When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have inlaws.
-- Jef Poskanzer

Being human does not excuse us from being ignorant, or
professing ignorance.
-- Jeff Baron

These people are the worst; people who don't agree with the
bigots, but for some reason argue that it is okay to be a
bigot; that the fact that a bigot has a right to their own
beliefs must somehow translate into standing by while those
beliefs are dispensed like poison from a snake in a public
forum.
-- Jeff Baron

We do not need anyone's approval to exist.  We already
exist, and we will become more and more visible, until every
person in this country not only knows someone with AIDS, but
knows someone that is gay.  They may hate that person, but
they will know who that person is.
-- Jeff Baron

Once you learn more about the ramifications of some of the
"PC" ideologies, you see that there are much more complex
issues lying beneath the surface.  When you apply your
solution, based on conclusions drawn from surface knowledge
of a situation, you get a solution which, on the surface,
makes things much better, while in reality, does not
actually change anything.  In a worst case situation, it
makes things much much worse.
-- Jeff Dauber

Personally, I am of the opinion that if my naked body is the
worst thing homosexuals have to offer, then people have
nothing to be afraid of.
-- Jeff Dauber

I hate everyone until I meet them, then I either like them
or pity them. 
-- Jeff Dauber

I love the line "Get over here and sit on my over-educated
tool." It says so much!
-- Jeff Dauber

Some of us learn to stand the heat; others try to extinguish
the fire.
-- Jeff Dauber

He who flames improperly risks making an ash of himself!
-- Jeff Klumpp

TV weatherman: "...and there's a cold mare's ass coming down
from Canada..."
-- Jeff Norris

I'm not sure that most elementary science courses teach
people to think rationally.  I was a math major and was (and
still am) quite interested in mathematical logic, but I'm
still quite capable of being as irrational as anyone.
-- Jeff Putnam

Sometimes I think we need pre-college.  Two years to fill
the gaps and undo the damage that high schools leave.
Basics like how to read and write, simple science and
math...
-- Jeff Putnam

We're both civilized.  We just use different civilizations
as our standard.
-- Jeff Shaevel

Justice, like lightning, should ever appear to some men
hope, to other mean fear.
-- Jefferson Pierce

Could we play on their fears of other sexualities enough to
get them to prevent the state from sanctioning any
orientation at all?  Could we prevent them from making that
any orientation other than heterosexuality?  I hate to say
it, but I don't think we're going to be able to stop the
flood by trying to block it.  We have to start turning it
the way we want it to go, or drown.
-- Jennifer Broekman

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of
course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

******* ******, **** ****, and **** ******* could proclaim
to the world that I could walk on water without my special
sandals and I would still think they are scumbags.
-- Jess Anderson

You have to get with the program.  People raised in the era
of books are out to pasture, did they forget to tell you?
Knowledge used to be a lacework of connections; now it's a
motley of facts.  Doing is valued; knowing is devalued:
after all, you can look it up, so why bother actually
knowing anything?  Don't waste your precious productivity on
the Big Picture; that'll just get in your way as you
frantically race toward Right Now and What Counts.  After
all, all you can do with a free mind is get into mischief,
so no more whining after printed pages; the future is help
screens!
-- Jess Anderson

Well now, ask yourself what you'd do if you were an Olympic
diver, standing up there about to wipe out the competition
with some 3.8 dive.  You *have* to rip the entry in the
water, no way to win without it.  So you certainly wouldn't
risk the turbulence of a Grand Protrusion (tm).

Didn't you know that male divers have a hook on the inside
of their belly buttons and attach a stout bungee cord there,
hook the other end on their engine, and yank it up the old
red eye, safely out of the way?  And of course, when they're
not competing, it keeps the gerbils from running away.
-- Jess Anderson

Practice mental hygiene: remind yourself that nothing lasts,
and don't be your own worst enemy.  Exasperation passes,
especially if you don't hold back its natural egress from
the scene.
-- Jess Anderson

Well, this is an argument about taste.
-- Arne Adolfsen
Rather a contradiction in terms, I think.
-- Jess Anderson

I don't care what you do with your crayons.  Just don't call
it art.
-- Jess Anderson

Honestly, some queens are *so* queer!
-- Jess Anderson

In the matter of taste: having some, I've given up the bars,
rather than be seen as a wag tailing a dog.
-- Jess Anderson

Your stance fairly reeks of the missionary position.
-- Jess Anderson

Few countries need perestroika as badly as the USA.
-- Jess Anderson

We have a million more cows than people in Wisconsin; if
they could vote, the average intelligence of our electorate
would rise precipitously.
-- Jess Anderson

I put more stock in the confrontational approach than in the
assimilationist one; I'm gettin' old, and I'm damned tired
of waiting around for freedoms that *any* decent society
ought to afford us.  I remember Jim Crow cars on trains and
drinking fountains that said "white only;" I know first-hand
what gradual is, when it comes to basic human freedom and
simple human dignity.  So I've had it with that "be nice"
shit.  I want my rights *right now*, and I have no faith in
more waiting, just because some bigot with a stick has cowed
some of the fags.
-- Jess Anderson

I don't like it when an LGB person says I'm isolating myself
from the public at large or taking a confrontational stance.
What that says to me is that the person doesn't see things
in terms of the public at large having persecuted me --
*they* do the isolating, not me.  Such a person doesn't seem
to see it as a distortion when they say I'm being
confrontational, which is analogous to saying I'm flaunting
it if I act "normal" where they can see me (hold hands, kiss
a same-sex friend, etc).  That's blaming me for *being*
oppressed, as though I choose to be.
-- Jess Anderson

The track record of the dominant majority is worse than
abysmal; it's truly hateful.  We more radical, in-your-face
folks see the "moderates" as having been co-opted by the
oppressors into doing their dirty work for them.  It serves
the oppressors' aims, not ours, when any of us *ask* for
what we have every right to *demand* from this society.
-- Jess Anderson

As for leap years, maybe this will be my year to snag a
Suitable Other, which I guess would be six nights of "who
are you?" and one night of "you're the only one."
-- Jess Anderson

I'm not at all necrophobic; there are a lot of people I'd
like dead.
-- Jess Anderson

The conversation is so *far* above your head that you don't
see it.
-- Jess Anderson

You don't vote people rights; they *have* rights.  You vote
laws, and laws that infringe rights are illegal and should
not be obeyed.
-- Jess Anderson

Patriotism once meant the Home of the Brave and the Land of
the Free; now it means the Home of the Fearful and the Land
of the Mindless.
-- Jess Anderson

Holster the gun, bub, and put your brain in gear before the
next time you think of taking it out for a spin.  You'll be
marginally less likely to shoot your own foot.
-- Jess Anderson

Well, we need to have it be very clear in people's minds
that if they push, we'll push back.
-- Jess Anderson

It's your life, and you don't owe a soul the least
explanation or justification.  If someone has a problem with
what you choose for yourself, just be real clear in your
mind that it's *their* problem, not yours.
-- Jess Anderson

No matter what you happen to believe, somewhere out there is
mortal flesh that feels and breathes and deserves a life in
direct contravention of your particular views.  Until our
personal universe includes and validates all such people, we
are part of the problem and looking away from solutions.
-- Jess Anderson

It's such a mess that we shouldn't be surprised when people
throw up their hands and opt for more schematic
understandings.  But when we come to really dealing with our
realities, it isn't very productive for the "people-first"
people to beat up on the "planet-first" people or vice
versa.  There is a *single* world underlying both views, and
it is *there* where we and all other things of immediate
interest exist.
-- Jess Anderson

If it's society (great or small), the issue is to be
compassionate and kind to others, to insist on what you see
as fairness and justice, to tolerate diversity to the limits
of your own understandings, experience, and mores, and
otherwise not to worry about it in the least.
-- Jess Anderson

To be placid requires only that one be centered within
oneself.
-- Jess Anderson

Acceptance: It means, to each of us, what it means.  It's
not so much a goal as an attitude, not a practice but an
inner equilibrium.  Acceptance in those terms, then, is
something one confers (with or without any rational or
logical process, whatever one is accustomed to and
comfortable with) upon oneself.
-- Jess Anderson

I think of love as a kind of emotional, psychological, even
moral and spiritual, and above all holistic embrace,
providing an environment of some kind, a niche in the
ecology of the human social organism.
-- Jess Anderson

By continuing to think of love as quantifiable, rather than
as some sort of holon, we reduce it to "thingness," a
necessary step in converting it to something one can fear
losing (or gaining) or trading off for personal sovereignty.
-- Jess Anderson

I see it as a state of mind (isn't everything?), but if we
wish to be free and unhobbled by fears of loss, perhaps we
can achieve that blissful state by looking at love as an
inexhaustible supply of self, an energy that we constantly,
ineluctably export from within ourselves toward the world at
large.  In my philosophy, this is a deep truth, one that
*can't* lose.
-- Jess Anderson

Remembering that a problem is what we say it is, one can
choose (this being proactive is an important element) to
*make* room, to place the fringe on whichever side of
oneself one wants (there are rewards, no matter where one
is), and to feel (alienated, accepted, alone, loved,
important, happy, sad, whatever) as one *wants* to feel.
-- Jess Anderson

In fact, since we create ourselves, we always have the
option to create a different us.  It's our only ability, we
couldn't do otherwise, but it's a useful ability.
-- Jess Anderson

Sometimes it is vital to the other person to put their lives
and themselves in a light they can live with comfortably.
I've met very few people, I think, who haven't at one time
or another found themselves clinging to concepts that really
didn't make much sense, but they still cared about it quite
a bit.  I suppose most people want to think they're in
control of their own destiny, at least most of the time, and
in most cases it probably does little lasting harm to give
them space to do it however they like.
-- Jess Anderson

Courage, friend.  Nothing lasts forever (no, not one thing),
and that includes the dark corner you currently inhabit.
-- Jess Anderson

For nearly everyone, a key issue is belonging, being part of
what one fancies others are.  Despite the commonness of
impressions to the contrary, we cannot be separated from
others except by our own leave.  Given memory, even death
does not part people.
-- Jess Anderson

I have a precept for you: truth is a fiction we believe in.  
-- Jess Anderson

I personally think the New Yorker is the swellest yuppie mag
there is.  I pretend Dorothy Parker's still there.
-- Jess Anderson

Thoughts cannot be expressed in just any old words; they
must be expressed in the best words for those thoughts, or
else things go awry to varying degrees.
-- Jess Anderson

The great difficulty of "politically correct" is that people
provide answers without having thought much about the
questions.  This is of course ass-backwards.
-- Jess Anderson

There's only one hard step: taking full responsibility for
*every* aspect of one's own life and acting thereupon.
Thinking one is not responsible for some part of it is a
very enticing little trap, and most people get stuck there
at one time or another.
-- Jess Anderson

We've built a deep, dark hole for your mind, and you get
down in there and stay there no matter what, because if you
don't obey, we'll take away everything and you'll be good
and sorry, and no complaining either.  Shut up!  Don't EVER
think.  We're your mommy and your daddy and your teacher and
your preacher, and we love you *so* much, that's why we're
setting your switch to OFF.  When you're older, you'll
realize what a sacrifice you made for us, er, I mean, we
made for you.
-- Jess Anderson

Et lux perpetua luceat eis

Whoso lives must swear never to forget
Humanity and inhumanity, sanity and insanity,
So those who are gone can remain alive
Unto all eternity remembered, loved.

-- Jess Anderson
   3.VI.91

So why not, if that's what you want? 
-- Jess Anderson

Better to imitate a good model than to devise a mediocre
one.
-- Jess Anderson

Maybe your neighbor is merely straight-acting, a deplorable
condition from which a full recovery is quite possible.
-- Jess Anderson

Thinking is not a panacea, but to paraphrase Gandhi, maybe
it would be a good idea to try some.
-- Jess Anderson

Sometimes you have to bite people hard on the lip before
they realize you're not kissing them, so keenly do they
yearn for approval.
-- Jess Anderson

There's no such thing as a negligible minority.  To think
there is is to be against life itself.  The idea makes you
an accomplice to hate and everything that comes with it.
-- Jess Anderson

I finished my correspondence course at the Jeffrey Dahmer
Institute of Fine Arts.  I got an A in Drawing, but only a
B in Quartering.
-- Jess Anderson

I swear to the Powers All Around that I cannot fathom
where all these idiots are coming from lately.  Have we been
written up in Field and Stream or what?
-- Jess Anderson

It was Herod, the Quayle of the day, who had no regard for
family values.
-- Jesse Jackson

What we have to fear is not the queers but the Quayles.
-- Jesse Jackson

Cops and reporters are much alike.  Both are absolutely
dedicated to doing the job at hand, regardless of obstacles.
And both, deep down, really believe the rules don't apply to
them.
-- Jim Barlow
   Houston Chronicle

Whether you like Furrball's whines or not, you've got to
admit he is a trained bear -- he always performs on cue.
Now if someone could just teach him some new tricks.
-- Jim Bishop

Society tends to forbid what it doesn't understand and what
it doesn't understand usually gets so screwed up that it
scares society into forbidding it.
-- Jim Graham

You have understand art all by yourself. It's not like
television, where you look at it and it explains to you
what you are looking at.
-- Jim Halat

Since Hurricane Andrew struck southern Florida 9 days ago,
That Man In The White House has visited Florida twice,
promised nearly $30 billion in federal aid, and ordered
immediate military assistance to the region.  250,000 people
are without homes, and 33 people are dead.  Since AIDS was
first uncovered in the United States 11 years ago, Those Men
In the White House have virtually ignored the disease,
reluctantly agreed to spend no more than $1 billion per
year, and inhibited any kind of public education efforts
aimed at preventing the further spread of HIV.  1,000,000
people are estimated to be infected with HIV, and more than
100,000 are dead.
-- Jim Wood

Next week, we'll learn how to nail Jelly to the ceiling.
-- Jimmy Aitken

Because of the greatness of the Shah, Iran is an island of
stability in the Middle East.
-- Jimmy Carter
   31 December 1977

In America you watch TV and think that's totally unreal,
then you step outside and it's just the same.
-- Joan Armatrading

I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie
star.  If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.
-- Joan Crawford

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
-- Joe Louis

Isn't that the beauty of complete unawareness?  It's the
very first thing you're unaware of.
-- Joel B. Levin

I'm horrified to find that some parts of the net have
concluded that I'm gay because I occasionally post to
soc.motss.
-- Clayton Cramer
And people question the use of "phobia" in the term
homophobia. 
-- Joel B. Levin

Ligneous and petrous projectiles can potentially fracture my
osseous structure, but pejorative appellations will forever
remain innocuous.
-- Joel Murray

[American Family Association Targets MTV] Thank God we know
we're right; thank God we know we possess the Truth; thank
God we know the proper values to give to our children, so
that we need not teach them to think for themselves; thank
God we have passed beyond the stage of needing to ask
questions; thank God we have been given the Vision of the
perfect world; thank God we have a decision procedure for
telling the difference between Gospel hymns and rock video
music.  I hope God has a sense of humour, and I hope She
doesn't give up on us for following our silly,
narrow-minded, self-important ways.
-- Joel Parthemore

I remember visiting Dachau, and seeing the visitors' film
(in English), where the narrator made the point (as I took
it) that Nazi Germany was the product of a handful of men
terrorizing a nation into cowering obedience.  What
bullshit.  Just how quickly do the history books start
getting re-written?
-- Joel Parthemore

All sects seem to me to be right in what they assert, and
wrong in what they deny.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All the knowledge that I possess, everyone else can acquire,
but my heart is all my own.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but not so
interesting as looking.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness
has genius, power and magic in it. 
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The unnatural, that too is natural. 
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion
of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens
the understanding and softens the heart.
-- John Adams

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for
absurdity.  Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for
Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of
other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
-- John Adams

We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest.
-- John Adams

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one
trifling exception, is composed of others.
-- John Andrew Holmes

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own
lies.
-- John Arbuthnot

Self-knowledge is always bad news. 
-- John Barth

It's supposed to be automatic but actually you have to press
this button.
-- John Brunner
   "Stand on Zanzibar"

It is easier to believe than to deny.  Our minds are
naturally affirmative.
-- John Burroughs

When things are slow, don't introduce new technology,
introduce new terminology!
-- John C. Dvorak

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all.
-- John Cage

I think that by commenting on my loves and my deepest
anxieties I jockey myself into the position of a bystander,
a traveller, even a tourist, for by claiming to enjoy a
degree of perspective I seem to be planning to move on to
some other country.
-- John Cheever

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors when the
money is gone.
-- John Ciardi

We are all dangerous, til our fears grow thoughtful.
-- John Ciardi

The man who first abused his fellows with swear-words
instead of bashing their brains out with a club should be
counted among those who laid the foundations of
civilization.
-- John Cohen

My guess is that when the oppression and mistreatment of gay
men and lesbians end, our society's obsession with
discovering the underlying causes of homosexuality will
likewise vanish.
-- John D'Emilio

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every
opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
-- John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the
world in jeopardy. 
-- John Dewey

Without a victim, what's the point of evil?
-- John Donald Collier

The most important thing about fashion is frightening people
with it.
-- John Dorrance

I'd say virginity is another pointless black-and-white
morality judgement imposed upon us by the Moral Majority and
their ilk.
-- John Dorrance

[On virginity:] Sex is a *huge* topic; do you think it can
be summed up in just *one* "experience?"
-- John Dorrance

Fundies have more time to waste sitting around calling phone
polls over and over again than do most other real people,
who have friends to phone instead.
-- John Dorrance

There is *no* Mara.  *No* cabal, *no* pods, ...  and *no*
plot to overtake the world, turning it into a purely queer
world where the only procreation done is via bisexuals and
insemination.  Nope.  Lies, all of it.
-- John Dorrance

[Of the epithet "breeder"] We know it's a hurtful word, and
we kinda wince to use it because we know we're stooping to
the same level as our oppressors, but it's sometimes the
only way for us to vent our rage because you can't kill a
kneebiter with a ground-to-air missile.
-- John Dorrance

You bears.  With your big, broad, hairy chests and big,
thick, veiny cocks.  You don't have what it takes.  You'll
*never* look good with big poufy hair.  You'll never know
what it's like to show off your new facelift, your new hair
weave, your new boy-as-a-badge-that-you're-young-really-
you-are!.  You think you have it good, but will you ever know
the joys of hours spent in a tanning booth, meals spent with
a salad?  No, you'll just languish along, getting robust and
warm, taking admiring stares for granted when you could be
slaving for them.  You think you've got it so good.  Hmph.
-- John Dorrance

Don't sweat it.  You're able to have a kid without being a
breeder, just as I'm able to knit without being a sweater
factory.
-- John Dorrance

It's possible to find a cure for AIDS, and AIDS isn't caused
by gay sex.  On the other hand, there is no cure for lung
gunk from inhaling the smoke of a burning plant.  Gay sex is
natural; smoking is stupid.
-- John Dorrance

Besides, when I used the term "alternative," I meant it to
mean what the people I'm talking about think it means, not
what *everyone* thinks it means.
-- John Dorrance

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but logs and boulders
kill me!
-- John Dorrance

They also have no problem with beating us up with clubs.
Would that make it right for us to do it to them?  I, for
one, prefer to hold myself to a higher standard.
-- Andrew Solovay
I'll remember that at your funeral.
-- John Dorrance

"Wake me when you're done" is probably better than "is it in
yet?"
-- Jack Hamilton
Or "Hurry up!  It's almost time for _Bewitched_!"
-- John Dorrance

If we must divide soc.motss (though I really don't
understand why; it'd just mean 4 groups to read instead of
one, and the 4 combined would probably add up to more posts
to read/compose than soc.motss alone), I think the names of
the groups should be soc.motss.salmon, soc.motss.mauve,
soc.motss.dusty.rose, soc.motss.vermillion or something like
that.  Red, orange, blue, and green are for crayons.
-- John Dorrance

Talent borrows, genius steals.
-- John Evans

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie --
deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth,
persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
-- John F. Kennedy

We have the power to make this the best generation of
mankind in the history of the world -- or to make it the
last.
-- John F. Kennedy

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it
cannot save the few who are rich.
-- John F. Kennedy
   Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make
violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy

If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing,
if it has conferred on mankind the power not only to create
but also to annihilate, it has at the same time provided
humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing.
-- John F. Kennedy

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days.  Nor
will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life
of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on
this planet.  But let us begin.
-- John F. Kennedy
   Inaugural Address

America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising
effort.
-- John F. Kennedy

The royals have a rotten job and they do their best.  At
bottom they're nice folks, just like any other.  We cling
frantically to any small evidence of their humanity, of
their just-like-us-ness.  It's a con, of course.  Anyone who
has more than a few minutes' acquaintance with them reports
their unbelievable arrogance and standoffishness.  Forget
to call any one of them "sir" or "ma'am" and you're dogshit.
Even amongst themselves they observe the rites of
precedence, bowing and curtseying like nineteenth-century
Manchus.  I thought when you folk decided to go it alone, you
dumped all this nonsense.  It was a good choice.  Stick with
it.
-- John Fisher

I shall now return to my previous exercise (I mention this
to show more clearly the nature of my interest): determining
who would have been named Counsellor of State in place of
the Countess of Southesk in the spring or summer of 1943 had
she (the Countess of Southesk) not existed.
-- Julian Lander
Stalingrad, Italy and then *this*.  A hell of a year... :-)
-- John Fisher

I'm astonished when I read people here saying that the US is
weaker than it was.  In relative terms, this can't be true,
it seems to me.  Yes, your economy is fairly screwed.  But
everyone else's is, too.  The US looks across the world and
no longer sees a single power which it need treat as an
equal.  You people rule the world.  More than any nation,
ever.

The person you choose as your leader will the most powerful
human being there has ever been.  I'm not meant to say who
I'd want.  It's thought to be intrusive, especially for
Brits (for some reason) to do this.  Too bad.  If you rule
the world, people give you advice.

I cannot bear to think of Bush, the warlord of the Gulf,
winning.  His way of speaking, chaotic, vulgar, mawkish and
brutal, revolts me.  His closeness to the religious
extremists is flatly terrifying.  Nor can I think what a
President Quayle, the swaggering little brownshirt we saw in
the Vice-presidential debate, might do.  Please, please,
think.  And then vote.  Please vote.  Please.
-- John Fisher

My only hope for the Republican Convention was that George
Bush would throw up during his acceptance speech.
-- John Fisher

Someone once said that The Flag for Americans is like a kind
of inanimate monarch.  If so, it has certain advantages over
the flesh-and-blood model.  It's far cheaper, for a start,
and doesn't fill your newspapers with the doings of its
wretchedly tedious offspring and their bedfellows.  It
doesn't have an irritating voice and go fox-hunting.  It
doesn't surround itself with gay men at every level, and
then ferociously deny that one of its sons is gay himself.
It doesn't get married to someone who calls the Chinese
"slanty-eyes" and insults people.
-- John Fisher

Bigelow's has three flavors I particularly like: "Lemon
Lift" which, astonishingly enough, is tea with built-in
lemon (REAL lemon) flavoring, "Plantation Mint" which is tea
with a touch of spearmint, and "Cinnamon Stick," tea with
cinnamon.
-- George Madison
Jesus wept.
-- John Fisher

We are all humans, we all know pain; it is not asking for
superhuman empathy to expect people to recognize the fact of
another's pain and to require them to act accordingly.  To
refuse to acknowledge someone else's pain, to react with
exasperation and annoyance at an encounter with obvious
distress is to abscond from our common humanity.
-- John Fisher

Giving help doesn't mean dashing in and doing what seems
like a good idea to you.  It means doing what the other
person wants.  If what the person wants is for you leave
them alone, it means doing that.
-- John Fisher

If you insist that you know what's right for a person, you
are precious close to saying that their feelings aren't
real, just because you don't understand them.  The next stop
after sentimentality is cruelty.
-- John Fisher

Point: The work of a single person may be completely
brilliant; and/or it may contain completely unchecked red
herrings, started hares, castles in the air and bees in the
bonnet.  The latter is almost inevitable when the single
person is surrounded by deference and sycophancy on every
occasion, and is so egotistical that every criticism is
treated as a personal attack.
-- John Fisher

Let me quote from the Bylaws of Nottingham, 1350: "No manner
kerl ne villayn sal linger in the Woodes to beset honest
merceres ond clerkes on peyne that hir Coylons be cutt off."
-- John Fisher

All the Mediterranean expatriots I meet, their idea of a
party is a small gin, a few hands of bridge and the BBC
world Service.  Lillibulero wafting from a hundred white
kitsch villas round the evening lentiscs.  Waiting for death
amidst the stridulation of bored cicadas.
-- John Fisher

A complex system that works is invariably found to have
evolved from a simple system that worked.
-- John Gall
   "Systemantics"

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance
from the problem.
-- John Galsworthy

We are continually faced with a series of great
opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
-- John Gardner

Just say no to thugs.  The ones who lock up innocent drug
users come to mind.
-- John Gilmore

A word of warning: believe none of what you read, but
devise -- as you must -- your own life.
-- John H. Osborn

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.
-- John Keats
   Correspondence, 1819

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is not the art of the possible.  It consists in
choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest
exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a
superior moral justification for selfishness.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under Communism, it's
just the opposite.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

[After coming out to a friend:] He called a few days later
and tried to apologize for every anti-gay joke he ever made
in my presence.  It seems most of my friends are more
concerned about the tasteless jokes they made before they
knew I was gay than about me being gay.
-- John Kominetz

The value of the Constitution depends on the good will of
government itself.  If the Supreme Court rules that the Bill
of Rights should not interfere with the important business
of government (which they have done on at least two
occasions), then the Constitution is meaningless.
-- John Kormylo

I think Perot's moral position is not too far out of
American mainstream.  As such, his moral/ethical views
deserve respect.
-- Mike Powell
So, what you are saying here is that a moral/ethical
viewpoint is deserving of respect, and even valid, simply
because it it "not too far out of American mainstream?" So,
if the majority of Americans believe in capital punishment,
it is morally valid?  If the majority of Americans believe
that it's okay to beat people to death simply because of the
gender of the person they love, that this viewpoint, this
moral and ethical viewpoint, is deserving of respect?
-- John Kusters

Life is something that happens to you while you're busy
making plans.
-- John Lennon

Do not worship, revere, or be afraid of any person, group,
space, or reality.  An investigator, an explorer, has no
room for such baggage.
-- John Lilly

I have always thought the actions of men the best
interpreters of their thoughts. 
-- John Locke

What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
-- John Lubbock

Removing philosophy from philosophy of science leaves you
nothing.
-- John M. Allen

Poetry is the mixture of common sense, which not all have,
with an uncommon sense, which very few have.
-- John Masefield

In the long run we are all dead.
-- John Maynard Keynes
   "The General Theory," 1936

Ignorance is not foolishness, and people often know much
more about running their lives than one thinks.
-- John Merrill

Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.
-- John Milton

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to
be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
-- John Morley

Hunger is not a problem of supply -- there is lots of food
being produced in the world.  It is a problem of politics
and economics, which are more and more the same thing.
-- John Olson

The first test of a truly great man is his humility.
-- John Ruskin

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of
education.
-- John Ruskin

As for born-again Christians, it seems to me that on the
whole, one birth per person is enough, and for some even
that may be too much.
-- John Simon

Manners are one of the truly lost causes.
-- John Simon

God is the Answer!  Oh??  Er, what was the Question?
-- John Stannard

Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before
anything will be done?
-- John Steinbeck

There ain't no sin, ain't no virtue - just stuff people do.
-- John Steinbeck

Why can't they have gay people in the army?  Personally, I
think they are just afraid of a thousand gay guys with M16s
going, "Who'd you call a faggot?"
-- John Stewart

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little
order will lose both, and deserve neither.
-- John Stuart Mill

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid
people are conservatives.
-- John Stuart Mill

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of
that.
-- John Stuart Mill

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill

Technology makes it possible for people to gain control
over everything, except over technology. 
-- John Tudor

I thought this was alt.flame, so I whipped out my throbbing
3" of SAT scores -- hey, why is everyone laughing?
-- John Woods

You probably go to museums and complain that Monet pressed
down too hard with his crayons because the picture is all
bumpy.
-- John Woods

Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in
humanity.  It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets
us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and
self-annihilation.
-- Johnny Hart

Maybe before we're so eager to stand up for our rights as
while males, we should think about sitting down for our
trespasses.
-- Jon Gilliam

I'm not sure that equality for all people is necessarily
brought closer by advocating treating everyone the same --
sometimes the pendulum needs to swing a bit back the other
direction before it comes to a rest.
-- Jon Gilliam

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
-- Jonathan Kozol

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally
discover everybody's face but their own.
-- Jonathan Swift

There are few wilder beasts more to be dreaded than a
talking man having nothing to say.
-- Jonathan Swift

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough
to make us love one another.
-- Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by
this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against
him.
-- Jonathan Swift

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must
build as if the sand were stone.
-- Jorge Luis Borges

We have stopped believing in progress.  What progress that
is!
-- Jorge Luis Borges

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.
-- Jose Ortega y Gasset

Everything in the world is strange and marvelous to
well-open eyes.
-- Jose Ortega y Gasset

All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one
thing or another.
-- Jose Ortega y Gasset

We cannot put off living until we are ready.  The most
salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness; it is
always urgent, "here and now," without any possible
postponement.  Life is fired at us point blank.
-- Jose Ortega y Gasset

Life as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one
ending: death, dismemberment, disintegration, and with it
the crucifixion of our hearts with the passing of the forms
we have loved.
-- Joseph Campbell

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no
mercy.
-- Joseph Campbell

In art, as in no other form of endeavor, there is meaning
apart from success.
-- Joseph Conrad

I just wish the Paris fags would be more adventurous, like
their best fashion designers.  Their idea of cutting edge is
last-year's Gaultier teeshirts bought on remainder.  No
wonder I was chased and called "dominatrix" when I looked
merely ordinary-go-out English...
-- Joseph Francis

I think if there should be a men's movement, it should be to
get in touch with the inner pig.
-- Joseph Francis

A friend should be someone you don't have to prove things
to, and with whom you can be yourself, whatever that is.  A
friend is also someone who should be able to tell you you
are being silly or brain-damaged or making poor decisions
about something without you being upset and offended, like
when the love of your life is taking you to the cleaners,
and you are completely blind to it.
-- Joseph Francis

Remember; you're not just a man, you're also a piece of
meat.
-- Joseph Francis

As long as society is anti-gay, then it will seem like being
gay is anti-social.
-- Joseph Francis

"Rod" -- quel nom.  C'est comme une baguette d'enfer!
-- Joseph Francis

Remonstrate.  Inculcate.  Agitprop.  Fake people out.
Affront their beliefs.  Suck them, show them what good sex
is, and that it is everywhere.
-- Joseph Francis

It was interesting to be 21, but it got boring after about a
year.
-- Joseph Francis

Oppression is a style, prejudices are its fashions.  Things
go in and out of fashion, but styles rarely change.  (I
think Rock and Roll style is more becoming on the whole; it
works well in the Netherlands.) Lesbigays sometimes are
known to be fashion victims, in all senses of the word.  I
would characterize it as being a problem of Style Deficit
Disorder on everyone's part.
-- Joseph Francis

Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes it.
-- Joseph Joubert

Never cut what you can untie. 
-- Joseph Joubert

Don't fight your problem.  Know that there is a solution.
-- Joseph Murphy

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.
-- Joseph Stalin

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call
him a vandal.  When he destroys one of the works of god we
call him a sportsman.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let
him have his own way.
-- Josh Billings

Well, it is quite arguable that the creation of a universe
is the act of someone who shouldn't be allowed to handle
firearms and sharp objects.
-- Joshua Geller

Impeccability, a finely honed strategic sense, and an
intelligent application of personal ferocity beat out fear
and hate every time.
-- Joshua Geller

Truly socially acceptable opportunities for rudeness are so
few that they should not be squandered.
-- Joshua Geller

I am the electric messiah -- the AC/DC _GOD_.
-- Joy Ralph

We were raised in vastly different places,/ Yet speak this
uncanny similar tongue./ Sometimes we're different races./
Certainly we're different classes./ Yet our common bonds and
common graces,/ Common wounds and destinations,/ Keep us
closer than some married folks./
-- Judy Grahn
   "Talkers in a Dream Doorway"

We cannot go around shooting others, just because they have
no reason to live -- or else, there'd be no TV evangelists.
-- Judy Tenuta

Laziness is nothing more that the habit of resting before
you get tired.
-- Jules Renard

Men willingly believe what they wish.
-- Julius Caesar

The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front
page nothing but their failures.
-- Justice Earl Warren

A constitution is not intended to embody a particular
economic theory....  It is made for people of fundamentally
differing views, and the accident of our finding certain
opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking
ought not to conclude our judgement upon the question of
whether statutes embodying them conflict with the
Constitution of the United States.
-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can
prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism,
religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to
confess by word or act their faith therein.
-- Justice Robert Jackson

Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not
matter much.  That would be a mere shadow of freedom.  The
test of its substance is to differ as to things that touch
the heart of the existing order.
-- Justice Robert Jackson

Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the
unanimity of the graveyard.
-- Justice Robert Jackson

I had assumed that the welfare of the single human soul was
the ultimate test of the vitality of the First Amendment.
-- Justice William O. Douglas
   1971

Difficile est saturnam non scribere.  (It is difficult not
to write satire.)
-- Juvenal

Probitas laudatur et alget.  (Honesty is praised and left to
shiver.)
-- Juvenal

Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.  (No one ever suddenly became
depraved.)
-- Juvenal

Prima est haec ultio, quod se iudice nemo nocens absolvitur.
(This is the first of punishments, that no guilty man is
acquitted if judged by himself.)
-- Juvenal

If you have not lived through something, it is not true.
-- Kabir

If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his
throne erected within you is destroyed.
-- Kahlil Gibran

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from
the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I
am ungrateful to these teachers.
-- Kahlil Gibran

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin
brother. 
-- Kahlil Gibran

Do not say, "I follow the one true path of the Spirit," but
rather, "I have found the Spirit walking on my path," for
the Spirit walks on all paths.
-- Kahlil Gibran

Only in a hut built for the moment can one live without
fear.
-- Kamo no Chomei

I've often thought that there may well be a significant
number of women who've opted to live a gay life given the
alternative of having to put up with men!
-- D. Owen Rowley
Let's *try*, for a couple of posts or two, to imagine
that women's decisions on their sexual orientations/
lifestyles aren't predicated on men.
-- Karen Kenny
   kkenny@gems.vcu.edu

Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.
-- Karl Kraus

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to
avoid.
-- Karl Kraus

Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour
chatting with me.  The law protects me from the former.
-- Karl Kraus

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as
his audience so that they will believe they are as clever as
he.
-- Karl Kraus

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure.
-- Karl Kraus

All historical events occur twice: once as tragedy, the
second time as farce.
-- Karl Marx

Labia are Lesbians Against Boys Invading Anything.
-- Kate Clinton

Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with
its own bisexuality.
-- Kate Millett
   "Flying"

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.
Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and
then.
-- Katharine Hepburn

You might consider whether running roughshod over people's
stated experiences and feelings is a good way to advance an
argument, if indeed you have one.
-- Kathryn Huxtable

Personally, I'm not sitting around waiting for Christians to
clean up their own house while the KKKristians are dragging
us to the gas chambers.
-- Kathy Beatty

I knew it!  You're in a relationship!  Those of us who are
in a relationship are obsessed with celibacy.  Those of us
who are celibate are obsessed with sex, of course.
-- Kathy Beatty

I think the strangest (or, perhaps, at least the most
inappropriate) conversation I've ever had during sex with
anyone was a long discussion (punctuated by the obvious
noises) of analytic means of setting a bound on the
primality of generalised Fibonacci numbers.
-- Kay Dekker

My friend Kate has just been telling me about "gender
dysphoria" - the state of not enjoying being the sex that
you are born with.  I guess I've got "gender euphoria".  I
think I'll put that on a T-shirt or something.
-- Kay Dekker

Maybe life is a grindstone; whether it polishes you or wears
you down depends on what you're made of.
-- Kay Fletcher

I've just spent a significant portion of my day reading an
ethernet terminal server manual, and was vaguely amused to
see that they have a feature called Camp-on (allows you to
wait on a port until it's no longer being used.) However it
got more amusing when I read the configuration example:
strip-record: raw direct_camp_on=always 1-3,8@132.245.6.32/6300 
I've seen some drag acts like that...
-- Keith Duddy

Democracy: An institution in which the whole is equal to the
scum of the parts.
-- Keith Preston

Conference: A place where conversation is substituted for
the dreariness of work and the loneliness of thought.
-- Kelvin Throop
   "The Management Dictionary"

If people behaved like governments, you'd call the cops.
-- Kelvin Throop

The evil in men's minds is just that: in their minds.
-- Ken Corey

Well, cabal and motss people, what am I not seeing here?
-- David Hatt
You are too young to know.  If you find out prematurely we
will have to re-pod you.
-- Ken Dykes

Oh yes!  Bring on the DARPAnaughts!  The evil zombie
warriors of the Pod People.  Quite frankly i think it has
reached the point where FAR TOO MUCH BANDWIDTH has been
wasted on these people.  Can we ignore them now?  Clues are
far too valuable to repeatedly waste on those who won't take
them.
-- Ken Dykes

[In .sig:] Gay and proud of it!
-- Dave Beals
After a few years when perhaps, maybe, you have swallowed
some of your pride you may come to realize being proudly gay
does not make you identical in either gayness or pride.  Gay
is an attribute, not a whole.
-- Ken Dykes

In 11 years I've lived in the US, I'm yet to meet an
American who knows three languages near as well as I know
English.
-- Jose Raneda
Perhaps instead of being technically proficient at three
languages, you'd do well to learn how to communicate in one
of them.  And, if in *eleven* years you haven't met an
American who is very proficient in three or more languages I
can either assume that a) Americans tend to not want to meet
you or b) they chose not to boast about their knowledge.
-- Ken Dykes

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
-- Ken Dykes

In addition I think science has enjoyed an extraordinary
success because it has such a limited and narrow realm in
which to focus its efforts.  Namely, the physical universe.
-- Ken Jenkins

To read of emotions that reflect our own is the only proof
we have we are not mad.
-- Kendall Hailey

The secret to surviving is to know what to throw away and
what to keep.
-- Kenny Rogers

It's not closeted gays you have to change; it's society --
society made closets necessary.
-- Kevin Lyda

It is astonishing how much energy some people waste worrying
that someone else might be enjoying life in ways they don't
approve of.
-- Kevin Michael Vail

A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost
pays to be one.
-- Kin Hubbard

When a fellow says it ain't the money but the principle of
the thing, it's the money.
-- Kin Hubbard

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
-- Kin Hubbard

Nobody ever forgets where he buried a hatchet.
-- Kin Hubbard

I believe I found the missing link between animal and
civilized man.  It is us. 
-- Konrad Lorenz

Earth is the cradle of the mind -- but you cannot live in
the cradle forever.
-- Konstantin Tsilokovski

Perhaps the only precept taught me by Grandfather Wills that
I have honored all my adult life is that profanity and
obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant
information to ignore you.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
   Eugene Debs Hartke, in "Hocus Pocus"

Every time bigotry goes unchallenged, the big bright future
of a non-discriminating, sexually unprejudiced society to
live in gets pushed further and further away.
-- Kyle McKay

It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.
-- L. Sprague de Camp

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those
who think.
-- La Bruyere

What is called discretion in men is called cunning in
animals.
-- La Fontaine

An old man gives good advice to console himself for no
longer being able to set a bad example.
-- La Rochefoucauld

Do nothing, and leave nothing undone. 
-- Lao Tzu

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves
and robbers there will be.
-- Lao Tzu

Yield and overcome, Bend and be straight, Empty and be full.
-- Lao Tzu

I'll say it again for the logic impaired.
-- Larry Wall

As I get older and older, I find little grounds to believe
in the real existence of a personal God who cares about me.
But if there is such a God for me to meet when I die, I
still think that I will have the same defense -- I tried to
do what is good, and apologise when I make mistakes.  If
that is not enough, then I was scorched before I was ten.
-- Laura Creighton

When we win, let us not forget those who lost before.
-- Laura Creighton

You do not know my aches, but you know your own and they are
in the same places.  This is what makes us a community.  We
have a lot of aches in common.
-- Laura Creighton

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
-- Laura Creighton

Unless the idea "do not hate" penetrates, it will find new
roots.
-- Laura Creighton

You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.  You
get crazy enough worrying about what's happening now.
-- Lauren Bacall

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing
our parents' shortcomings.
-- Laurence J. Peter

A bore is a fellow talking who can change the subject back
to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it
back to yours.
-- Laurence J. Peter

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of
prejudices.
-- Laurence J. Peter

You know, for every dollar a man makes a woman makes 63
cents.  Now, fifty years ago that was 62 cents.  So, with
that kind of luck it'll be the year 3888 before we make a
buck.
-- Laurie Anderson
   "Beautiful Red Dress"

Nothing scares a middle class bigot more than a possible
liability. 
-- Lawrence C. Foard

Southern California, where the American dream came too true.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

By refusing to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality,
schools shove heterosexuality down the throats of gay
children.  Just because straights make up a larger proportion
of the population doesn't mean you can have every single
second of everything dedicated to you.  The schools already
teach a value system that results in 1/3rd of suicides being
gay teens.  If anything is immoral...
-- Lawrence Foard

Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament -- it is
possible to be both.  How?  By never taking an unnecessary
chance and by minimizing risks you can't avoid.  This
permits you to play out the game happily, untroubled by the
certainty of the outcome.
-- Lazarus Long

I don't need to be told by the blind what they see.
-- Bil Snodgrass
Nor do we need to be told what's "emotional" by someone who
takes pride in their emotional instability.  Log off.  Go
home.  Get help.
-- Lazlo Nibble

First as to speech.  That privilege rests upon the premise
that there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that
it may not be lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated.
It needs to rest upon the further premise that there are no
propositions that are not open to doubt; it is enough, even
if there are, that in the end it is worse to suppress
dissent than to run the risk of heresy.  Hence it has been
again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are no
limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only
the hearers' beliefs and not their conduct.  The trouble is
that conduct is almost always based upon some belief, and
that to change the hearer's belief will generally to some
extent change his conduct, and may even evoke conduct that
the law forbids.
-- Learned Hand
   "The Spirit of Liberty"

Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the
right to say "fuck the government."
-- Lenny Bruce

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen
to a man.
-- Leon Trotsky

The Air Force pinned a medal on me for killing a man and
discharged me for making love to one.
-- Leonard Matlovich
   former Air Force sergeant

So the history of ideas marches sullenly forward into an
unimagined future, its eyes cast resolutely back over its
shoulder at the useless but reassuring guideposts of the
past.
-- Les Daniels
   "Comix: A History of Comic Books in America"

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take
you there.
-- Lewis Carroll
   "Alice in Wonderland"

"Well, in *our* country," said Alice, still panting a
little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran
very fast for a long time as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen.  "Now, *here*, you
see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the
same place.  If you want to get somewhere else, you must run
at least twice as fast as that."
-- Lewis Carroll

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it
might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't,
it ain't.  That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll

"-- but there's one great advantage in it, that one's
memory works both ways."
   "I'm sure mine only works one way," Alice said, "I
can't remember things before they happen."
   "It's a poor sort of memory that only works
backwards," the Queen remarked.
-- Lewis Carroll

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible
things before breakfast.
-- Lewis Carroll

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced
person, provided it arises out of the needs of life and is
dedicated to life's further developments.
-- Lewis Mumford

This book is a mirror.  When a monkey looks in, no
philosopher looks out.
-- Lichtenberg

Fashions in sin change. 
-- Lillian Hellman

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's
fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
-- Lillian Hellman

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard
skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin

The problem with the rat race is that even if you win,
you're still a rat.
-- Lily Tomlin

All my life I wanted to be somebody.  Now I realize I should
have been more specific.
-- Lily Tomlin

I have no problem dealing with reality, but as a lifestyle I
find it too confining.
-- Lily Tomlin

Sir Isaac Newton secretly admitted to some of his friends:
"I understand how gravity behaves, but not how it works!"
-- Lily Tomlin

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in
the library?
-- Lily Tomlin

That there are no ready logical insights is sometimes an
insight in itself.
-- Lindsay Patten

Gays without a community are defined by straight people's
homophobia -- you *are* the "other," the pervert, the freak.
Viewing yourself through the eyes of a society that loathes
you is a devastating experience.  It's impossible not to
internalize that level of contempt.  The armor that will
eventually defend you comes from lovers and friends, and
being one among thousands like yourself who are living
fruitful, happy lives.  But there's no easy fit for
teenagers in the adult gay community -- a world that to
teens, if they even know about it, seems far away and
unattainable.  Adults steer clear of gay youth, fearful of
charges of "recruiting," even though, as Charley says, if
any sexuality could be induced, it would be heterosexuality,
given how we're bom- barded with it.  And because almost
every teen who can is hiding, it's near impossible to
develop your own community.
-- Linnea Due
   "Young and Gay"

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
-- Linus Pauling

As a heterosexual, I do not understand homosexuality; as a
Christian, I cannot condone it; but as an American, I
certainly cannot imagine forbidding it.
-- Lisa Boonstra Plueger
   Orange City, Iowa

Uncut.  Do you think I should cut it though?
-- Zak May
No, I think you should bobbit.
-- Lisa Elser

I just couldn't convince Texans that Dukakis was Greek for
Bubba.
-- Lloyd Bentsen

It is not to discuss matters of equality in an intellectual
sense.  If they speak of equality it is with ragged voices,
tired of pain.  They want a space to weep where others may
kiss their tears away, or howl in fury where others will
take up the howl.  Can you cry?  Can you howl?  Or do you
just whine?
-- Lloyd Warren Ravlin

Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because
the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.  Always be
a moving target.  Live.  Live.  Live.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
   "Barrayar"

Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them
so.
-- Lord Chesterfield

Ridicule is the best truth. 
-- Lord Chesterton

Most Gracious Queen we thee implore, To go away and sin no
more, But if that effort be too great, To go away at any
rate.
-- Lord Colchester
   "Diary"

Decide promptly, but never give any reasons.  Your decisions
may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong.
-- Lord Mansfield

Do not ever let any of the would-be sophisticates in this
world tell you that correspondences like yours do not mean
everything in the world to someone like me.  Because I am
here to say that they most certainly do.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

At the political level, _honkey_ is insignificant.  No
systems privilege it.  Black students changed _honkey_
quickly after a little education, especially when I showed
them how to document their oppression and how to invest
their verbal energies less frivolously, more systematically
to change the systems by which white people receive special
privilege.  I was especially effective when I pointed out
that my insight derives not from my own whiteness, but from
my being an articulate sissy!  Once hetero egos mended, I
got an apology from every one who had called me "Faggot!"
too.  Solidarity is dangerous unless we can unite with
justice for all.
-- Louie Crew

One of the things that I most resent about the media's
attention to Skin Heads and other neo-Nazi groups in the USA
is that the media use them to sustain an illusion that White
Supremacy and homophobia are at the fringe of our society:
they are at its core.
-- Louie Crew

Too many of us blindly trust hetero educators to tell us
what we need to know.  Rather than join a community, most
homosexuals call it a 'ghetto' and hold out for the private
and personal privileges they can win on their own.
-- Louie Crew

Interracial friendships deserving of the name should not
occur if the price is to silence our addressing these
larger, impersonal but fiercely unjust systems.  The same
goes for friendships between straits and lesbigays.  The
same goes for friendships between 'out' lesbigays and
closeted ones.  Don't mistake a bandaid for surgery.
-- Louie Crew

Cantonese for masturbate is ~DAH FAY GAY~ (with tones
ascending as in DO-RAY-ME for the musical scales).  It means
"hit [DAH] the airplane [FAY GAY]." Thai for masturbate is
"feed the Chickens." You can see who has the luxury of lying
on his back, who has to do it on the run in this global
jerk.
-- Louie Crew

Only a dead fish floats with the current.
-- Louie Crew

We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto
himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the
law is, insists on laying it down to others.
-- Louis Kronenberger

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way
that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.
-- Ludwig Erhard
   "The Observer," 1958

Often it is only very slightly more disagreeable to tell the
truth than to lie; about as difficult as drinking bitter
rather than sweet coffee; and yet I still have a strong
inclination to lie.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

In so far as people think they can see the "limits of human
understanding," they think of course that they can see
beyond these.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson

No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a
dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson

If you do everything, you'll win.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362
admonishments to heterosexuals.  That doesn't mean that God
doesn't love heterosexuals.  It's just that they need more
supervision.
-- Lynn Lavner

What I give form to in daylight is only one percent of what
I've seen in darkness.
-- M.C. Escher

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
-- M.C. Escher

Bill Clinton lied to his wife.  Can his country trust him?
George Bush lied to his country.  Can his wife trust him?
-- M Carling

Idempotency is a powerful notion; sometimes the ability to
do nothing conveniently is all I need.
-- M. Cohen

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good
enough for me!
-- Ma Ferguson
   Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs
more than it [the territory] is worth.
-- Macaulay

I think every straight guy should have another man's tongue
in his mouth at least once.
-- Madonna

Crucifixes are sexy because there's a naked man on them.
-- Madonna

Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of
another.
-- Madonna

Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
-- Mae West

Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an
institution yet.
-- Mae West

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
-- Mae West

Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct
understanding. 
-- Mahatma Gandhi

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small
voice' within me.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye soon makes the world blind.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open
one.
-- Malcolm S. Forbes

You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then
pull it out six inches and say you are making progress.
-- Malcolm X

I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with
nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner.  Sitting at the
table doesn't make you a diner.  Being here in America doesn't
make you an American.
-- Malcolm X

Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks
into a mirror, he sees a monkey.
-- Malcolm de Chazal

Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a
painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced
softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully,
politely, plainly and modestly.
-- Mao Zedong

Political power flows from the barrel of a gun.
-- Mao Zedong

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with
bloodshed.
-- Mao Zedong
   "Quotations from Chairman Mao," 1966

Our culture says that it's more important to stay within
other people's expectations and comfort zones than within
our own.  Crossing gender lines is some sort of real
transgression.  Making the point that one's choice of
bedmates is not "properly" a *gender* issue is in itself a
revolutionary act.
-- Mara Chibnik

Anyone who thinks that it isn't misogynistic to insult a man
by saying "you've got penis envy" doesn't have a clue.  Of
course, that's probably not all he hasn't got.
-- Mara Chibnik

I am trying out a lot of ideas about sex and gender.  None
is quite so simple as the familiar version, which rests on a
couple of traditional axioms that I've explicitly rejected:
that physical sex is always the determiner of gender and
that heterosexual pairings take priority.  It is amazing how
many new possibilities open up once these restrictive
notions are discarded.
-- Mara Chibnik

A transcendental number is easier to put into a glossary
entry than a transcendental experience is.
-- Mara Chibnik

Homophobia isn't a disease of the intellect and it isn't
subject to an intellectual cure.
-- Mara Chibnik

If you're going to lead a horse to water it's a good idea to
put something into the trough.
-- Mara Chibnik

As a matter of concern, how can anybody tell that somebody
else is gay.  Especially when that other person is EIGHT!!
It is a bit O.T.T.  to go and assume that your nephew is
gay.  If he is or not you have no right to label him Gay,
Heterosexual,...  etc.  That is his own decision.
-- Aaron J. Quigley
It's up to him to assert his own sexuality, certainly.  But
perhaps you would care to comment as to why it's "a bit
O.T.T." to assume that the youngster is gay -- but not to
assume that he isn't.
-- Mara Chibnik

In my next life I could come back as a -- god forbid --
fundamentalist, in which case I doubt I should be grateful
to anyone who informed me about a fascinating and altogether
enjoyable world of sin and degradation.
-- Marc Loy

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep
one foot on the ground.
-- Marcel Proust

All the mind's activity is easy, if it is not subjected to
reality.
-- Marcel Proust

We are healed of suffering only by experiencing it to the
full.
-- Marcel Proust

The snob is not a man who loves snobs, but merely a man who
cannot set eyes on a duchess without finding her charming.
A homosexual is not a man who loves homosexuals, but a man
who, seeing a soldier, immediately wants to have him for a
friend.
-- Marcel Proust

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his
neighbor says, or does or thinks, but only at what he does
himself, to make it just and holy.
-- Marcus Aurelius

No woman can call herself free until she can choose
consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
-- Margaret H. Sanger

One never notices what has been done; One can only see what
remains to be done.
-- Marie Curie

Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars
for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul.
-- Marilyn Monroe

How companies decide to treat their lesbian and gay
employees could prove to be the real test of efforts toward
diversity.  We can all benefit from leaning how to manage
this important issue.
-- Marjorie Kelly
   Editor and Publisher "Business Ethics"

Nothing can stop him.  Not even common sense.
-- Mark Komarinski

The public seems incapable of distinguishing between your
garden variety idiot and your genuine lunatic.  It is the
same confusion the public has had over the last five
Presidents.
-- Mark Leeper

[To Bob Sarver] Run, don't walk, but run to the nearest bank
and apply for a loan.  Tell them that you want the money to
buy a clue.  After speaking with you for a few moments, I am
sure the loan will be no interest.  Lord knows that your
posts are.
-- Mark Morrissey

The goal was to see who would be better *under* UNIX,
Madonna or Marky Mark.  Wanting to get started right away, I
used the BSD socket code.  I also used sockets because they
seemed perversely appropriate.  Anyway, I kept running into
a snag -- whenever I executed the select() system call, I
kept getting the Marky Mark stream returned as ready --
never the Madonna stream.  It seemed that I could only
select Marky Mark!  Was this because the Madonna stream was
never ready or was there something wrong with my socket
implementation?  Obviously, more investigation was required.
Next, I decided to treat both as device drivers.  For this,
I switched to ATT System V as both seemed appropriate as
stackable streams.  However, once again, I found that there
was a problem.  The only one I could push stacks of streams
on was Marky Mark!  Once again, I suspect that there was
something wrong with my implementation!  Next, I implemented
them as processes under SunOS and decided to characterize
their behaviour.  In order to check on their system calls, I
used the feature inside of trace() which allows me to attach
myself to running processes.  Lo-and-behold, I could only
successfully attach myself to Marky Mark!  I became
suspicious.  At this point, I began writing simulations
(classified!) and developing hypotheses and working on the
definitive paper (soon to be published in a Computing
Systems Journal near you) which would explain it all.  I was
at a total loss until I made a discovery which clarified it
all: I was running Kinsey UNIX version 6.  Go figure.
-- Mark Morrissey

Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation.
-- Mark Shepherd
   former CEO of Texas Instruments

Fame is vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly
certainty is oblivion.
-- Mark Twain

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is
laughter.
-- Mark Twain

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they
do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those
I do understand.
-- Mark Twain

If a person offends you and you are in doubt as to whether
it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme
measures.  Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.
-- Mark Twain
   "Advice to Youth" Speech, 1882

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world
to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
-- Mark Twain

Courage is the mastery of fear -- not the absence of fear.
-- Mark Twain

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of
a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
-- Mark Twain
   "Following the Equator," 1897

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning
that does the work.
-- Mark Twain
   "Correspondence," 1908

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I
said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain

When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is
time to stop and reconsider.
-- Mark Twain

First get your facts; then you can distort them at your
leisure.
-- Mark Twain

By the time a boy realizes that maybe his father was right,
he has a son telling him he's wrong.
-- Mark Twain

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of
ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-- Mark Twain

A man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
-- Mark Twain

Reader suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a
member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful
edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and
gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
-- Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a
good example.
-- Mark Twain

Let us be thankful for fools.  But for them the rest of
us could not succeed. 
-- Mark Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they
are more deadly in the long run.
-- Mark Twain
   "Sketches New & Old"

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is,
knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first
great benefactor of our race.  He brought death into the
world.
-- Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he
will not bite you; that is the principal difference between
a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity.  Another
man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain

On his belief in heaven or hell: I don't want to express an
opinion.  You see, I have friends in both places.
-- Mark Twain

Heaven for climate, hell for society. 
-- Mark Twain

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one
is young.
-- Mark Twain

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out
of focus.
-- Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes.  Or needs to.
-- Mark Twain

Be careful of reading health books; you might die of a
misprint. 
-- Mark Twain

It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu
speech.
-- Mark Twain

Lord, save us all from old age and broken health and a hope
tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
-- Mark Twain

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the
man but deteriorate the cat.
-- Mark Twain

I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.
-- Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a
human soul.
-- Mark Twain

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon
that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust
of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's
sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye.  These
institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and
always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because
you will always be and remain slaves of minorities.  There
was never a country where the majority of people were in
their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.
-- Mark Twain
   "The Mysterious Stranger"

The difference between the right word and a similar word is
the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
-- Mark Twain

There is no distinctly American criminal class except
Congress.
-- Mark Twain

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School
Board.
-- Mark Twain

Last night you licked my ass and now you are complaining
that I used your toothbrush!?
-- Markus Kiser
   (loosely based on a comic by Ralf Koenig)

Wer, wie, was?  Wieso, weshalb, warum?  Wer nichts fragt
bleibt dumm.
-- Markus Kuhn

You can motherfuckin' snake and connive any shit you want
in life if you got education.  Then you know how to use that
shit to your advantage and trick motherfuckers and shit, you
be the man.
-- Marky Mark

In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world
it is a fact.
-- Marlene Dietrich

Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the
morning.
-- Marlo Thomas

My blackness is often over-shadowed by all the controversies
around sexuality.  There's a way in which your sexuality
becomes a marker for everything you do.  Too often we in
black communities are just as oppressive around issues of
sexuality and patriarchy as anyone else.
-- Marlon Riggs

Among many prominent black figures, gays are completely
castigated and seen as a testament to the pernicious ways of
white racism, the ultimate embodiment of the emasculated
black man.  We are no longer men, no longer black because of
our homosexuality.

To me, it's more painful because we should know better.  We
can't pretend innocence and ignorance in the way that people
who've been privileged and who never had that kind of
oppression inflicted upon them can.

We know the ways in which culture, rhetoric and politics
serve oppression, and yet we continue to impose those very
narrow notions of identity in such a way that we only mimic
what the majority culture has done to us.  It's shameful.
-- Marlon Riggs

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved.  Do
you suppose I care?
-- Marquis de Sade

The NeXT has gone virtual.
-- Marshall F. Gilula

Tomorrow's life is too late.  Live today. 
-- Martial

People have a lot of control over whether or not they will
like living in a new place.  It has a lot to do with
attitude.  Of course, even the best of attitudes don't come
with a guarantee.
-- Martin Brooks

When I see the drag queens and butch hairy people in totally
revealing leather, I feel kinda creepy and ashamed.  I don't
want the general public to think that we dress and act like
that.
-- Lawrence Clarke
But we *do* dress and act like that.  You may not, I may
not, and many others may not, but "we," as the queer
community at large, do indeed dress and act like that.  The
message the general public needs to comprehend is that we
all deserve equal protection under the law regardless of
whether or not we choose to be assimilationists.  Just be
what you want to be; let everyone else do the same.
-- Martin Brooks

When I see the drag queens and butch hairy people in totally
revealing leather, I feel kinda creepy and ashamed.
-- Lawrence Clarke
Perhaps you'd claim some of these "creepy" people if you got
to know them better.  After all, we might not be marching in
Pride Parades or posting to soc.motss if it weren't for the
"creepy" people.  (You call that creepy, my pretty?  I'll
give you creepy; how about your garden-variety, militant,
Christo-fascist, funda-gelical homophobe with a bad hairdo?)
Another thing, what right does the general public have to
judge us anyway?  From where I sit, the general public seems
quite indisputably fucked up.
-- Martin Brooks

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively
maladjusted.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The time is always right to do what is right.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.
We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied into a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but
it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty
important.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the the
philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic
injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
   "Strength to Love," 1963

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in
moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of
challenge and controversy.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
   "Strength to Love," 1963

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere
ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must
be demanded by the oppressed.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I am free at
last!
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If they don't see you when you are there, they won't notice
when you leave -- or are taken.
-- Martin Niemoller

Yesterday I had a premonition that I would have Deja vu
tomorrow.
-- Martin Prime

Every psychic investigator of [the medium] Mrs.  Piper was
impressed by her simplicity and honesty.  It never occurred
to them that no charlatan ever achieves greatness by acting
like a charlatan.  No professional spy acts like a spy.  No
card cheat behaves at the table like a card cheat.
-- Martin W. Gardner

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there
are people in the world and as there are days in the lives
of those people.
-- Mary Calderone

A pig on a mountain sees more than a wise man with a bag
over his head.
-- Mary Jane DeFroscia

NASA doesn't have any live weapons; we can only drop
management paperwork on those who peeve us -- but with a
B-52 we can drop a *lot* of it!
-- Mary Shafer

Resolve to find thyself; and to know that he who finds
himself, loses his misery.
-- Matthew Arnold

No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his Bible.
-- Matthew Arnold

Philistinism!  -- We have not the word in English.  Perhaps
we have not the word because we have so much of the thing.
-- Matthew Arnold

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can.
That is the only secret of style.
-- Matthew Arnold

I prefer old age to the alternative. 
-- Maurice Chevalier

To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been
misunderstood. 
-- Maurice Maeterlinck

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful
death than the animals that know nothing.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck

It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
-- Max Beerbohm

Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man
doesn't have to experience it. 
-- Max Frisch

There is a delivered form of "gay art" being generated in
the U.S., nicely composed of proper works done mostly by
middle- and upper-middle-class white people.  The vast body
of art being done by other gay people is being ignored.
-- Max Vasilatos

So the bartender sez, "whaddaya have, young man?" So I sez,
"A vagina.  I have a vagina."
-- Max Vasilatos

We've given lip service to the notion that AIDS is not a gay
disease, but now that AIDS is a major problem for women and
people of color, the gay community is going to have to
examine its insularity around this.
-- Max Vasilatos

If women are going to be expected to carry condoms, I expect
to be able to borrow a tampon from a guy on the street.
-- Max Vasilatos

There are five issues for the gay movement: homophobia,
recognition for our families, an aggressive comprehensive
AIDS policy, gay rights, and decriminalization of sodomy.
-- Max Vasilatos

It's not that I don't like penises.  It's just that I don't
like them on men.
-- Max Vasilatos

There are so many examples of cataclysmic experience that
change us enough that we are united by it, and separated
from those who don't share it.  Being gay.  Serious illness.
Being born again in Christ.  Being raped.  Being married.
Parenting.  Being poor.  Literacy.  Feminism.
-- Max Vasilatos

Stigma, pain, isolation, poverty, subordination,
infantilization, lack of proper health care, lack of access,
go hand in hand with illness and disability.  For large
segments of the U.S.  population, those things aren't
resolvable.  For those same segments of the population,
_Final Exit_ won't make a whit of difference.  Nor will the
fact that clinical depression and rationality are assessable
and differentiable in the abstract.  If we didn't treat
people who are ill and disabled like such utter shit, a lot
of this discussion would be moot.
-- Max Vasilatos

I would love to know American academics whom you consider
worth reading, who have written anything in the last 20
years.
-- Joseph Francis
Nancy Friday.
-- Arne Adolfsen
Someone who, in a survey of hundreds of American women, is
only able to locate *five* lesbians, *three* of whose sexual
fantasies focus on dogs?
-- Max Vasilatos

"Denial" rejects its object's (or subject's) experience and
awareness in favor of something "more true." It justifies
intervention to fix a person's reality.  It says "you are
broken, you are lying, you don't know who you are." And I
do.
   "Denial" is an insidious busybody who says "I'm here to help
you," an authoritative mask over unsolicited advice, a
pretense that mutates learning into disinterment, a
brainfuck for imposing righthinking and throws in that it's
all your fault.
   "Denial" blames the victim, solves real problems by making
acquiescent slaves, claims that acceptance is the road to
nirvana.  You're not who you think you are.  Face it.
   "Denial" is heideggerian cant, affordable only by the
entitled, paid for by the oppressed, the warrant for your
arrest as a criminal against yourself.  You have no privacy,
I know your secrets.  Let us paint my picture of you more
brightly.
   "Denial" says, "HIV infected?  You must laugh." It says I
will tell you how to run your death, claiming that I know
what you want, *really*.  And always remember, it's *you*
who wanted it.  I'm just here to help.
-- Max Vasilatos

If al fresco dickwaving is what it takes to be objectified
here, some of us are very much in luck.
-- Max Vasilatos 

Dress for success: wear a white penis.
-- Max Vasilatos

Honor really is integrity, but it does carry all that
patriotic, religious, family garbage from its history.  I
claim it back.  *My* honor is in-your-face, angry rejection
of national boundaries, wallowing in world conversation,
taking back my body and messing with it how I please, and
shrieking in rage at the agencies that offer me a last
resort and make me need it.
-- Max Vasilatos

On the day that a power structure dominated by urban
aboriginal sorts denies housing, jobs, and medical care to
twinks and education majors, I might begin to worry about
this.  At the moment, it's not high on my list.
-- Max Vasilatos

And vulva is not a car made in Sweden.
-- Max Vasilatos

Aesthetic inflexibility is unattractive at best.
-- Max Vasilatos

[I was] out for a stroll and came across a bunch of the
usual teens hanging out having an argument, the local police
officers part of the crowd, leaning on the fence, listening
quietly.  It was dark out.  "Stupidness isn't a word, dummy,"
one said.  "Yes it is, stupidness, that's what it is."  I
deduced quickly that they'd wandered away from a previous
topic.  "It's *stupidity* not *stupidness*."  "Maybe it's
both."  The debate raged on.  I felt like I was on the net.  
-- Max Vasilatos

Those who trivialize the forces that bring gay kids to kill
themselves cannot possibly be able to imagine being despised
by their own society, and unwanted by their families, and
being (as far as they can tell) alone in the whole world.
They jest at a pain they have never felt, and are themselves
worthy of nothing but contempt.
-- Max Webb

In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere.
-- Maxim Gorky

Whose mind is it that doesn't suffer a loud takeover once in
a while?
-- Maxine Hong Kingston

We all have our darker side.  We need it; it's half of what
we are.  It's not ugly; it's human.
-- McCoy
   "The Enemy Within"

Here's an idea: bring one of your HIV-breeding "friends"
home and make your parents *really* proud.
-- Michael Chapman
Here's an idea: stick an IV in your ear, your brain is
severely undernourished.
-- Jake Coughlin
Indeed.  It's enema time!
-- Melinda Shore

Just feeling a little annoyed and political today.
-- Donald Hardy
Hang onto the feeling -- with a little righteous living, you
can feel annoyed and political every day.
-- Melinda Shore

I'd say that self-hating homos who would sell out other gay
and lesbian people at the drop of a dime is a pretty
negative stereotype, wouldn't you?  And yet they keep at it.
Sigh.
-- Melinda Shore

Typing for speed and I sacrificed clarity.  
-- Bob Sarver
We know what you meant, you moron.  Now go spread your
cheeks for someone who cares.
-- Melinda Shore

I have gotten several pieces of email from various folks who
are "silent lurkers" on this newsgroup; that is, they read
but never post (or so they tell me).
-- Bob Sarver
Yeah, but I've gotten hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails
from people who don't post because you make them embarrassed
to be homosexual.  Heels up, Boob!
-- Melinda Shore

Try reading *all* my posts.  
-- Alan Williams
And don't forget the anti-emetic!
-- Melinda Shore

Do lesbians always travel in schools, like fish?
-- J.N. Shaumeyer
Naah.  We travel in packs, which are a lot like schools but
massively more menacing.
-- Melinda Shore

Could it be that Phool is holding all homosexuals
responsible for Cretin receiving obscene phone calls?  Is he
requesting that all homosexuals publicly castigate whoever
it is that's harassing Cretin?  I haven't seen either Phool
or Cretin denounce whoever it is that is posting pictures of
underage girls to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica and I've
never seen either of them apologize for "Big Tits Monthly,"
the 1929 stock market crash, or Nehru jackets, so it seems
to me that neither is in any position to make any demands
whatsoever in this regard.
-- Melinda Shore

That said, I'd like to mention that I always have to laugh
when guys like those in soc.neander^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmen
complain about man-hating feminists.  Well, gee, how on
earth could any woman resent these guys when they obviously
hold women in such high regard and have such a deep and
abiding commitment to gender equity?
-- Melinda Shore

If God didn't intend for there to be lesbians, she wouldn't
have designed in fingers and skin.
-- Melinda Shore

Okay, perhaps "insensitive" was a poor choice of words.  How
about "oblivious?"
-- Melinda Shore

I named her [his sister's Barbie doll, hair buzzed, arms
replaced with G.I.Joe's] spinster bitch, the lesbian death
commando.
-- Jake Coughlin
Wow!  I never, ever thought anyone would name a doll after
me.  Thanks!! 
-- Melinda Shore

The use of either 'PC' or 'lighten up' is usually enough to
cause me to junk an article: the former indicates that the
writer is a raving moron incapable of original thought,
while the latter is a pretty clear indication that the
writer is an insensitive clod.
-- Melinda Shore

The reason that bigotry and libertarianism *seem* to go hand
in hand is that it provides people a pseudo-intellectual,
pseudo-economic rationale for their intrinsic selfishness.
-- Melinda Shore

People who attempt to have reasoned discussions with raving
morons deserve what they get.
-- Melinda Shore

While there have been other notable victories and losses and
other high-profile public protests, the Stonewall riot was a
remarkable event.  I would venture that it's on a par with
the events that led to the modern-day celebration of
Hanukkah (which seems to me to be about Jewish militarism
and a particular victory - that miracle business is pretty
incidental).  Not only were we fighting back and reclaiming
our neighborhood *for days*, but the ones in the thick of it
were the most marginal members of our community.  The
Stonewall Rebellion was dramatic and heroic in a way that
very little has been before or since.
-- Melinda Shore

My interest in turning Stonewall into a religious event is
negligible, but that business about ecclesiastical sanctions
sounds fun.  What do we do - read carnivorous lesbians out
of the meeting?  Sit shivah for gay men with lousy taste in
clothes?  Tell me more.
-- Melinda Shore

One of the good things (quite possibly the only good thing)
about the term 'PC' is that it helps us identify those who
can't think clearly.  It's generally used as shorthand for
"there's something that I don't like about your arguments
but I'm not smart enough to figure out what it is, so I'll
just apply this sloppy label."
-- Melinda Shore

I mean, everyone knows that all men are interested in is
power and sex and they all have the spirituality of a
plastic shower curtain.  What right-thinking person could
possibly be interested in making an emotional commitment to
*that*?"
-- Melinda Shore

I have an IQ of 150, if that's worth anything.
-- Zak May
We use base 10 numerical representations in this country,
not base 6.
-- Melinda Shore

This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form
does not matter.
-- Mercedes Lackey

Life doesn't happen in straight lines.
-- Michael A. Atkinson

Reminds me of the final in a Discrete & Combinatorial
Mathematics course at Rose-Hulman.  The professor was very
strict about no food/drink in his class, yet two guys came
in for the final, and were eating grapes.  He asked them to
get rid of them; the response was, "But Dr.  Grimaldi, these
are Abelian Grapes!"
-- Michael Bryan

Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.  In
1926 Robert H.  Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled
rocket, achieving an altitude of 41 feet.  In 1962 John
Glenn orbited the earth.  In 1969, only 66 years after
Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground for 12 seconds,
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon in
Apollo 11.
-- Michael Collins
   Former astronaut

I am *not* going to get into a discussion of Sweeteners
with a Southerner.  It's like discussing being Born Again
with a fundie.
-- Michael Hefner

What is the position of modesty in the Americas?
-- FJ van Wingerde
Nothing to brag about ...
-- Michael L. Siemon

We queers are probably especially good at feeling
isolated--and paradoxically we are thereby united.
-- Michael Pettersen

Everyone queer grows up an alien in an alien culture.  Even
our parents are not Of Us, usually -- we're changelings,
pods, after all.  There are some gays who don't feel like
they belong in gay culture (and are promptly rejected by the
regular queers for saying so).
-- Michael Pettersen

If women have evolved enough from the primate state to be
able to deny their instincts and say "no," then men should
have evolved to the point where they can understand it.
-- Michael Pettersen

I have created a new mailing list for the specific purpose
of facilitating the education of potential presidential
candidate Ross Perot about bisexuals, gays, lesbians, &c,
and our issues and concerns:
-- (ulmo@netcom.com)
The extreme stupidity of this idea exceeds any level of
comprehension I can muster.
-- Michael Portuesi

The government -- it's not just your Big Brother, it's that
kid down the block who likes to beat you up and take your
lunch money.
-- Michael Rawdon

Just remember, Los Angeles has more gay people in it than
San Francisco has people.
-- Kraig Meyer
Yeah, but so does San Francisco.
-- Michael Siemon

Complete Californication takes a lifetime.
-- Michael Thomas

You can lead a dog to culture, but it'll still insist on
sniffing its neighbor's butt.
-- Michael Thomas

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about
nothing.
-- Michelangelo Antonioni

Whoever you are, please go away.  Your logic is weak, your
assumptions questionable, and your audience uninterested.
-- Michelle Elliott

You can't bring gays out of the closet if you keep love and
affection in.  Period.
-- Michelle Elliott

McDonalds is health food.  Go ahead---quote me.
-- Mick Washbrook

It was an education to hear that Americans thought all Brits
(men, at least) were gay.  This is because straight America
mistakes culture for effeminacy.
-- Mick Washbrook

It's better to be a pariah than a messiah.  If you're a
pariah, they'll just ignore you; if you're a messiah,
they'll nail you to some damn cross and center a cult around
you.  It looks bad on the resume.
-- Mick Washbrook

I certainly don't see how a "one night stand" devalues sex.
-- Mick Washbrook

The day always ends, but this doesn't stop you from getting
up in the morning, does it?
-- Mick Washbrook

But how bad does the church have to become before you decide
that it's "basically bad?" One of the flaws of church today
is that it still exists.
-- Mick Washbrook

And [Madonna]'s pissing off the Catholic church.  She can't
be all that bad.
-- Mick Washbrook

I remember reading with some amusement a section on South of
Market that I saw in a tourist guide to San Francisco.  They
earnestly warned tourists to stay away from the "highly
dangerous S&M bars" in this area of the city.  Er...does
anybody know where these "highly dangerous S&M bars" might
be, so that I can, you know, stay away from them, and
prevent other stray young men from getting sucked in(to) a
twilight world of sleazy sex, leather, and opera?
-- Mick Washbrook

Contrary to popular opinion, there are only two important
factors involved in a Gay or Lesbian turning Republican, and
those same factors are also responsible for milk turning
sour: being left on the shelf for too long and being
neglected.
-- Mick Washbrook

Don't worry about things that you have no control over,
because you have no control over them.  Don't worry about
things that you have control over, because you have control
over them.
-- Mickey Rivers

Fair and softly goes far. 
-- Miguel de Cervantes

All music jars when the soul's out of tune.
-- Miguel de Cervantes

Time ripens all things.  No man's born wise.
-- Miguel de Cervantes

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
-- Miguel de Cervantes

When your death makes a gesture to you, an enormous weight
of triviality drops away.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
   "Don Juan"

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without
passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without
uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair
even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not
God Himself.
-- Miguel de Unamuno

Natural vs. unnatural is a pretty worthless distinction.
-- Greg Parkinson
Only to someone such as yourself, with a deliberate
disability to perceive the difference.
-- Bob Sarver
But easy for someone like you, who can manufacture the
difference on the spot.
-- Mike Batchelor

[On Jesse Helms's by-pass operation:] (quoting) "There was
no mention of any difficulty in finding the heart.  Surgeons
also replaced a faulty heart valve with another taken from a
pig, so there should be no question of tissue
incompatibility."  The pig tissue might reject him.
-- Mike Batchelor

I hate shopping, but I love buying...
-- Mike Batchelor

Heterosexuals invented artificial insemination.
-- Mike Batchelor

Speaking of the lurkers, I have read that they number in the
thousands.  15,000, I think, was the figure cited.  How the
hell does anyone know this?  If they are all as quiet as
church motss, how can you know they are there?
-- Mike Batchelor

As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might
as well try making it round this time.
-- Mike Dennison

"Pedant" is a word some people resort to when they're unable
to keep up.
-- Mike Godwin

I never cease to get a chuckle when I read a personal ad
that says "straight acting." I always think, "god, that
doesn't sound like much fun, does it?"
-- Mike Hennahane

Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on
peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators,
and is almost impossible to eradicate.
-- Mike Hermann

The only thing you can say is that if you live long enough
you will die.
-- Mike Lipsie

[On term limits:] I would probably suggest something like 6
years government service in an elected office at any level,
or perhaps something divided into state time and federal
time.  I don't have the Answer, but it can't be the
open-ended deal we have now.
-- Scott Moir
You're thinking small.  An hour an a half max.
Why allow someone who knows what they are doing to continue?
-- Mike Lipsie

Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how
we wasted the morning.
-- Mike Matthews

Anagram for Republican National Convention:
Puritanical ban on innocent love.
-- Mike Morton

What's the soup du jour today? 
-- Mike Nichols

If God dislikes gays so much, how come he picked
Michelangelo, a known homosexual, to paint the Sistine
Chapel ceiling while assigning Anita to go on TV and push
Orange juice?
-- Mike Royko

Honesty, in the absence of civilization, is merely squalid.
-- Mike Siemon

I shall continue to be an impossible person as long as those
who are now possible remain possible.
-- Mikhail Bakunin

It is what you aspire to rather than what you attain that
brings into being even what you do attain.  Never set your
sights too low.
-- Miriam Allen De Ford

Dustin Pons, an American high-school student who attended a
Soviet school for three weeks, as quoted in the New York
Times: "American teenagers are more socially advanced.  For
instance, in their free time Soviets would rather read a
book or walk in the park or play the piano.  American
teenagers would probably go out and watch TV, go to a movie,
or something more actively inclined."
-- ("The Progressive")

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.
-- (Hungarian proverb)

Graffiti du jour: above every men's urinal in the first
floor men's restroom of this building: "Stare at this dot
<DOT> to avoid suspicion."
-- (Graffito)

Marcie : You can catch more files with honey than you can
with vinegar.
Kelly : Yeah, but if you pull their wings off they'll eat
whatever you give them.
-- ("Married with Children")

Mujer, El Amor es Ciego.  El SIDA Tambien.  Abre Tus Ojos.
(Woman, love is blind.  So is AIDS.  Open your eyes.)
-- (Poster targeting women of color)

The Rodney King jury has re-examined the Zapruder footage
and has decided that JFK's injuries were self-inflicted.
-- (Joke in the Village Voice)

Jump on the clue bus, and ride with us.
-- (T-shirt at a Pride parade)

One evening at the home of Dorothy and Richard Rodgers,
dinner guests were happily and lengthily denigrating Clare
Boothe.  Her sole defender at the table was Ilka Chase, who
protested that Clare was always loyal to her friends.
Moreover, added Chase, Clare was always kind to her
inferiors.  "And where does she find them?" asked Dorothy
[Parker], without looking up from her plate or missing a
bite.
-- (Dorothy Parker)

Heterosexuality isn't normal, it's just common.
-- ("QueerCampus," University of Delaware)

Someone:
Oh tempura!  Oh morays!
A second:
On my office door I have a cartoon by Larson that shows
a bunch of eels standing around, sipping cocktails.  The
caption is: Social morays.
A third:
Ok, now everybody sing!
"When an eel bites your leg
 And the pain makes you beg,
 That's a moray!"
(Thank you Fusco Brothers)
-- (Clever folks)

Research lab employee to customer support line -- Support
person: You're not our only customer, you know.  Research
Lab: But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons.
-- (Clever person)

A tool that isn't sharp enough to cut you badly isn't sharp
enough to use.
-- (Unknown person)
However, the sharp edges should NOT be on the handle.
-- (Krasno's Corollary)
The handle is on the other end, you idiot. 
-- (Larry's Lemma)

Wesley: "Captain, this doesn't look like the holodeck to
me." Worf: "Ready to cycle airlock, Captain." Picard: "Make
it so."
-- (Star Trek)

Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000,
'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200,
marijuana: 0.  Considering government subsidies of tobacco,
just what is our government protecting us from in the drug
war?
-- (williamt@athena.eng.sun.com)

There have been great standoffs in the past: Grant vs Lee,
Patton vs Rommel, Dan Quayle vs a Locked Door...
-- (from "Parker Lewis Can't Lose")

Silence keeps us all in darkness, we can't change things
overnight!/ But we can shed a little light, Be Political not
Polite!
-- (Romanovsky & Phillips)

Suck my cock and twist my balls,
Invade my ass and stretch the walls.

Fuck my mouth and ejaculate
But please don't kiss me 'cause I'm straight.
-- (Graffito)

Patience is a bitter plant, but it has sweet fruit.
-- (German proverb)

On action alone be thy interest, never on its fruits.
-- ("Bhagavad Gita")

A cloak is not made for a single shower of rain.
-- (Italian proverb)

No sane PC user abandons the world of DOS machines for
workstations simply to get more power.
-- (PC Magazine)

14% of the seagulls in Santa Monica Bay are lesbians.
-- ("20/20," 4/24/92)

Only the lead dog gets a change of scenery. 
-- (Law of the Yukon)

Don't worry, be homo.
-- (Sign in NYC Gay Pride Day parade)

The US Vice-President, Mr Quayle, told a Young Republicans
conference that the country would soon be observing the 20th
anniversary of "Neil Armstrong and Buzz Lukens's walk on the
moon." Buzz Lukens is a congressman recently jailed for
having sex with a minor.
-- (News report)

You were travelling in close formation at over 80,000 kph,
only 10 meters from Cadet Albert, and you didn't even know
his orientation?!?
-- ("StarTrek: The Next Generation")

That's right, honey, I AM a dyke!  My tongue's been places
you didn't even know you had!
-- (Rox, head Cycle Slut in "Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town")

Friends don't let friends vote Republican." :-)
-- (Anonymous), in misc.talk.politics

In business, your judged by what you say ...  nothing can
kill the confidence of a perspective client faster then a
proposal littered with grammatical, usage or punctuation
errors.
-- (Ad for RightWriter, The Grammar Checker)

My teeth are painful.  I can't bend anything.
-- (Anonymous ESL student)

I hate straight people who think they have anything
intelligent to say about "outing."
-- ("Queers Read This")

I hate straight people who think stories about themselves
are "universal" but stories about us are only about
homosexuality.
-- ("Queers Read This")

I hate straight recording artists who make their careers off
of queer people, then attack us, then act hurt when we get
angry and then deny having wronged us rather than apologize
for it.
-- ("Queers Read This")

I hate straight people who say, "I don't see why you feel
the need to wear those buttons and t-shirts.  I don't go
around telling the whole world I'm straight."
-- ("Queers Read This")

Do not gawk or stare at lesbians or gay men, especially bull
dykes or drag queens.  We are not your entertainment.
-- ("Queers Read This")

If you cannot comfortably deal with someone of the same sex
making a pass at you, get out.
-- ("Queers Read This")

It's as if the propagation of the species is such a fragile
directive that without enforcing it as if it were an agenda,
humankind would melt back into the primeval ooze.
-- ("Queers Read This")

I hate having to convince straight people that lesbians and
gays live in a war zone, that we're surrounded by bomb
blasts only we seem to hear, that our bodies and souls are
heaped high, dead from fright or bashed or raped, dying of
grief or disease, stripped of our personhood.
-- ("Queers Read This")

I hate straight people who can't listen to queer anger
without saying "hey, all straight people aren't like that.
I'm straight too, you know," as if their egos don't get
enough stroking or protection in this arrogant, heterosexist
world.
-- ("Queers Read This")

They've taught us that good queers don't get mad.
-- ("Queers Read This")

Go tell them go away until they have spent a month walking
hand in hand in public with someone of the same sex.  After
they survive that, then you'll hear what they have to say
about queer anger.  Otherwise, tell them to shut up and
listen.
-- ("Queers Read This")

The fault is great in man or woman/ Who steals a goose from
off a common;/ But what can plead that man's excuse/ Who
steals a common from a goose?
-- ("The Tickler Magazine," 1821)

At the door to the bus a woman snarled at a guy, "Watch
where you're going." To which he responded, "If I knew where
I was going, I wouldn't be here."
-- (reported by Jack Carroll, in New York, 2/91)

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not
ask remains a fool forever.
-- (Chinese proverb)

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the
greatest violence.
-- (Hebrew Proverb)

You can outdistance that which is running after you, but not
what is running inside you.
-- (Rwandan proverb)

This "telephone" has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication.  The device is
inherently of no value to us.
-- (Western Union internal memo, 1877)

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- (Indian proverb)

There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least
two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection.  It
is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of
entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest
suggestion of affection.  As the amount of affection
increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call
it dating.  Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- ("Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior")

The good thing about drawing a tiger is that it
automatically makes your picture fine art.
-- (Calvin & Hobbes)

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life
exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has
tried to contact us.
-- (Calvin & Hobbes)

Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous?
-- (Calvin & Hobbes)

On February 3, 1893, Mrs.  Abigail Ashbrook of Willingboro,
New Jersey refused to pay taxes because she was not allowed
to vote.
-- (News report)

President Andrew Jackson announced that the National Debt
was paid-in-full on December 2, 1834.  (**sigh**)
-- (News report)

On March 24, 1960, the U.S.  Supreme Court ruled that the
novel "Lady Chatterly's Lover" by D.  H.  Lawrence was not
an obscene book and could therefore be sent through the
mail.
-- (News report)

On June 17, 1963, the U.S.  Supreme Court banned prayer or
Bible reading in public schools.
-- (News report)

On July 10, 1913 in Death Valley, California, the
thermometer registered 134 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest
temperature ever recorded in the United States.
-- (News report)

On July 11, 1892 the U.S.  Patent Office decided that J.  W.
Swan and not Thomas A.  Edison was the inventor of the
electric-light carbon for the incandescent lamp.
-- (News report)

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of sex." Thus read the 19th Amendment to
the Constitution, which passed on August 26, 1920.
-- (News report)

The earliest public demonstration of television was given by
John Logie Baird of Scotland, using a development of the
mechanical scanning system suggested by Paul Nipkov in 1884.
-- (News report)

On May 8, 1911, England signed a treaty with China that made
opium the main trading commodity with the Chinese.
-- (News report)

The only thing that separates us from the animals is our
ability to accessorize.
-- (Steel Magnolias)

I'm angry at straight people who sit smugly wrapped in their
self-protective coat of monogamy and heterosexuality
confident that this disease has nothing to do with them
because "it" only happens to "them."
-- ("Queers Read This")

I expect nothing.  I fear no one.  I am free.
-- (epitaph of Kazantzakis)
I expect everything.  I fear everyone.  I am rich.
-- (motto of Leona Helmsley)

Do you think homosexuals are revolting?  You bet your sweet
ass we are!
-- (Gay Liberation Front, New York)

The polite thing to do has always been to address people as
they wish to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think
dignified.  But it is equally important to accept and
tolerate different standards of courtesy, not expecting
everyone else to adapt to one's own preferences.  Only then
can we hope to restore the insult to its proper social
function of expressing true distaste.
-- ("Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior")

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in
common.  Instead of altering their views to fit the facts,
they alter the facts to fit their views ...  which can be
very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that
needs altering.
-- (Dr. Who)
   "Face of Evil"

Oh, I don't blame Congress.  If I had $600 billion at my
disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too.
-- (Lichty & Wagner)

I am dealing with things you cannot possibly understand.
-- ("Lost Boys")

Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities
decline sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
-- (Dr. Who)

There's so many different worlds/ So many different suns/
And we have just one world/ But we live in different ones.
-- ("Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits)

I think *true* happiness can only be found in the wanton
indulgence of animals.
-- (Hobbes, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson)

"Status quo" is Latin for the mess we're in.
-- (West Texas farmer)

When words people say have nothing to do with what is real,
but somehow it doesn't matter when they are caught lying,
whose speech can be trusted?  If nobody's speech can be
trusted, how can any of us know each other?
-- (Homoture #3)

You can't reason with a hungry belly; it has no ears.
-- (Greek proverb)

We are your worst nightmare.  We are your greatest fantasy.
-- (The Dartmouth LGB magazine "In Your Face")

To act sincerely with the insincere is dangerous.
-- (Taoist proverb)

All power to the imagination.
-- (Wall poster, Paris, May 1968)

For many of us, a library card is the first symbol we
acquire, as children, of our being separate persons, with
freedom of individual choice and a capacity for responsible
action.
-- (The New Yorker "The Talk of the Town")

At a distance, you fool others; close at hand, just
yourself.
-- (Yiddish proverb)

Fall down seven times, get up eight times. 
-- (Zen saying)

If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me
twice, shame on me.
-- (Italian proverb)

What is the use of running when you are on the wrong road?
-- (Proverb)

You can hold the bird but the song she sings is really free.
-- (Deee-Lite)

To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most
desirable.  The highest form of generalship is to conquer the
enemy by strategy.
-- (Ancient Chinese Warlord)

Only when the last tree has died, and the last river been
poisoned, and the last fish been caught, will we realize
that we cannot eat money.
-- (19th Century Cree Indian)

Q.  What do I say when introduced to a homosexual "couple"?
A.  "How do you do?  How do you do?"
-- ("Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior")

If you can't stand up for something, you'll fall for
anything.
-- (greg@pomona.claremont.edu)

Philip asked that people be angry and that they rage against
another life cut short by AIDS.
-- (Obituary of former Madisonian Philip Cizewski)
   (d. 1/28/91 at age 37)

Death (your own): This will be accepted as an excuse, but we
shall require two weeks notice, as we feel it is your duty
to teach someone else your job.
-- (Corporate sick leave policy)

War: been there, done that ... hated it.
-- (QueerPeace/DAGGER chant)

The incessant witless repetition of advertisers'
moron-fodder has become so much a part of life that if we
are not careful, we forget to be insulted by it.
-- ("The Times," London)

Like an unquenchable thirst, Virtue eludes those who long
for it the most and drenches those who don't hold it too
close!
-- ("Virtue Quest")

Bush has it backwards -- abortion is surgical; bombing is
murder.
-- (Sign at anti-war march)

Censorship is to creativity what lynching is to justice.
-- (Two Live Crew defense attorney)

I knew there was a void in my life that was missing.
-- (Charlene Tilton of _Dallas_)

Oxymorons: student athlete, military intelligence, military
justice, mercy killing, pollution-free.
-- (Various sages over the ages)

Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your
country's been doing to you.
-- (Avengers)

"But there *must* be homosexuals who date women?"
"Yes. They're called lesbians."
-- (NBC tv sitcom "Golden Girls," 1991)

A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the
stirrup.
-- (Old Mongolian Saying)

A burro is an ass.  A burrow is a hole in the ground.  As a
reporter, you are expected to know the difference.
-- (UPI Stylebook)

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always
gets in.
-- (London graffito)

We are sworn that no boy or girl, approaching the maelstrom
of deviation, need make that crossing alone, afraid, or in
the dark again.
-- (The Mattachine, 1955)

Marriage is not a public conveyance; it doesn't have to go
anywhere.
-- (Miss Manners)

I shot an arrow into the air and it stuck.
-- (graffito in Los Angeles)

Two is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2.
-- (Grabel's Law)

I'm vilifying you!  For God's sake pay attention!
-- (The Lion in Winter)

Thou shalt not covet heterosexual privilege, for those who
seek to be equal to heteros lack ambition.
-- (Queer Nation/SLC)

The best thing you've ever done for me, is to teach me to
take my life less seriously.
-- (Indigo Woman)

A misty morning does not signify a cloudy day.
-- (Ancient proverb)

It's good to hope; it's the waiting that spoils it.
-- (Yiddish proverb)

They came. They saw. They did a little shopping.
-- (Graffito on the Berlin Wall shortly after it opened)

To tell the truth is dangerous; to listen to it is annoying.
-- (Danish proverb)

It isn't easy being green. 
-- (Kermit the Frog)

Thomas Edison averaged one new patent every two weeks of his
adult life.
-- (News report)

A male spider's penis is at the end of one leg.
-- (News report)

The reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at
once.
-- (Buckaroo Banzai)

The average coffee tree produces only one pound of coffee
per year!
-- (News report)

Is this Heaven?  No, this is Iowa. 
-- ("Field of Dreams")

The Academy Award-winning cinematographer of "Dances with
Wolves" was at a reception recently which honored Queen
Elizabeth II.  When he approached her in the receiving line,
she said to him (paraphrasing): "How terribly interesting
your work must be.  You know I have a brother-in-law who is
a photographer." "How terribly coincidental," he replied, "I
have a brother-in-law who is a queen.
-- (News report)

If you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get
to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special,
very lovely things about Holland.
-- (PFLAG handout)

It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried
something and failed.
-- (motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere)

This passage was written by a London reporter on the eve of
the England-West Germany Soccer World Cup final of 1966...
"If, on the morrow, the Germans defeat us at our national
sport, be not dismayed.  For twice in this century, we've
defeated them at theirs."
-- (From the San Jose Mercury News, 7 July 1990)

The sword of truth is just another weapon.
-- (NoMeansNo, "The Tower")

I think that when statesmen forsake their private conscience
for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country
by a short route to chaos.
-- (Sir Thomas Moore to Cardinal Woolsey in _A Man for All Seasons_)

All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce
obedience by prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their
power.  The swastika is only one example of many in recent
history.
-- (American Bar Association task force on flag burning)

Before engaging in a battle of wits, make sure your opponent
is armed.
-- (East Texas Proverb)

Draft politicians, not human beings.
-- (antidraft slogan coined by Jeff Daiell, 1979)

Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us. 
-- (Militant religionists everywhere)

Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time.
-- (A coffee cup)

Sometimes insanity is the only alternative.
-- (Button at a science fiction convention)

Tell the truth and run. 
-- (Yugoslav proverb)

There can be no offense where none is taken.
-- (Japanese proverb)

There is no statute of limitations on stupidity.
-- (Randomly produced by Markov3)

We can't allow the people to interfere with the smooth flow
of democracy.
-- (Kitchener city council member)

You get what you settle for.
-- ("Thelma and Louise")

JT Kittredge writes, of Vince returning to the newsgroup:
   Hallelujah!  Maybe our years of wandering aimlessly in
   the wilderness are finally over.  Our prophet has
   returned!
Vince Manis writes:
   Verily I say unto you that a prophet is not without
   honour except in his own country, but should he
   venture into his native country, he will lose his
   head, and at the sight cheap tarts will do lurid
   dances in Beardsley dresses, with an overly-lush
   musical background.  And thus is a prophet, with his
   head on a plate, converted into a capital loss.
Brett Manz writes:
   And all this time I thought it was a non-prophet
   organization.
-- (Clever person)

Geez, this is scary!!!  I wish every parent in America had
access to this newsgroup.
-- (usenet@swbatl.sbc.com, about soc.motss)

Northeastern University is committed to a policy of equal
opportunity for all students and employees without regard to
race, color, religion, sex, sexual performance, national
origin, or handicap or veteran status.
-- (College bulletin)

I don't think that it is.  I think it is hostile toward
idiots.
-- ("Thelma and Louise" screenwriter Callie Khoury, on
   charges that her film is hostile toward men)

You can buy fashion, you can't buy style!
-- (Mother of Martin Prime)

Jackie (Roseanne's sister having a weird reaction to Nancy's
coming out) says: How can you be a lesbian?  What about all
those singles' dances we went to?
Nancy: Singles' dances?  I thought we were dating.
-- (TV sitcom)

We found this correction in CitiReport, a newsletter on San
Francisco civic affairs published by Larry Bush, who is also
an Examiner columnist.  It said: "Mayor Jordan's policy
director, Jean Harris, asks that CitiReport correct last
issue's account saying she is a 'self-described bull dyke.'
'It's diesel dyke, not bull dyke,' Harris says.  CitiReport
regrets the error."
-- (News report)

What is the word for the moment when you forget precisely
what it feels like to make love to someone?  There isn't
one.
-- ("Delirium and Dream")

To bi or not to bi...that was a question.
-- (latarra@camelot.bradley.edu)

Some big military muck-a-muck was quoted in Newsweek on
their anti-gay policies: "We don't necessarily 
discriminate -- we simply exclude certain types of people." 
-- (News report)

Here is a supplementary bulletin from the Office of
Fluctuation Control, Bureau of Edible Condiments; Soluble,
Insoluble, and Indigestible Fats and Glutinous Derivatives,
Washington D.C.  Correction of Directive 943456201, issued a
while back, concerning the fixed price of groundhog meat.
In the directive above-named, the quotation on groundhog
meat should read "ground hogmeat."
-- (Government bulletin)

"Oregon Citizens Alliance" is an anagram for 
"Elect nice Nazi liar goons."
-- (Unknown source)

So, one day [alledgedly], Schoenberg says to Mahler: "I
don't listen to Wagner, because I don't want to be
influenced."  Mahler replies: "Well, you eat beef don't you,
and you're not a cow?"
-- (Unknown source)

"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of A Penis"
-- (T-shirt slogan)

Unfortunately the Prime Minister had left before the debate
began.  Otherwise he would have heard some caustic comments
on his absence.
-- (Liverpool paper)


Inside every anarchy lurks an old boy network.
-- Mitchell Kapor

Once a ruler becomes religious, it [becomes] impossible for
you to debate with him.  Once someone rules in the name of
religion, your lives become hell."
 -- Moammar Qaddafi
    at the General People's Congress in Tripoli in October, 1989

It probably sounded better in the original German.
-- Molly Ivins
   _The Nation_ on Pat Buchanan's speech at the GOP convention

Ross Perot, at the age of 25, was shocked, shocked to find
the Lord's name was taken in vain by the men of the United
States Navy...

What a hilarious letter Ross Perot wrote the secretary of
the Navy in 1955 explaining why he wanted to leave after two
years, instead of the four he owed...

Perot said, "I have found the Navy to be a fairly godless
organization. I do not enjoy the prospect of continuing to
stand on the quarterdeck as officer of the deck in foreign
ports, being subjected to drunken tales of moral emptiness,
passing our penicillin pills (we must assume this was not
done to ward off pneumonia) and seeing promiscuity on the
part of married men."

Perot continued: "I have observed little in the way of a
direct effort to improve a man morally while he is in the
Navy, or even hold him at his present moral level."
"I constantly hear the Lord's name taken in vain at all
levels," wrote Perot. "I find it unsatisfying to live, work
and be directed in an atmosphere where taking God's name in
vain is a part of the everyday vocabulary."
-- Molly Ivins
   Austin American-Statesman, 27 May 1992

He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with
both eyes...
-- Molly Ivins

Is there anything to cheer us that in the realization that
Ed Meese is Attorney General?  Yes.  It could have been
Jesse Helms.
-- Molly Ivins

Ever been to a YAF convention?  By comparison, SDS was a
Marx Brothers movie.  What's the point of doing good if you
can't have fun doing it?  You want to wind up looking like
Jeanne Kirkpatrick?  So smile.
-- Molly Ivins

There's another perfectly good reason to be grateful to
Ronald Reagan: he's so amazing that zillions of future
writers are daily being discouraged from ever trying their
hands at fiction.
-- Molly Ivins

The Reagan administration announced that the new object was
not to blink.  It has a sort of yogic elegance.  Just as
with yoga, in order to truly excel at not blinking, you must
begin by letting your mind become perfectly empty.  The
right sport for Ronald Reagan.
-- Molly Ivins

Our only president [Reagan] is so dumb that if you put his
brains in a bee, it would fly backwards.
-- Molly Ivins

[Reagan] has set forth a new ethical agenda that deserves
sober consideration from us all.  "What I want for this
country *above all else*," he said, "is that it may always
be a place where a man can get rich." Our highest purpose,
our noblest goal, our finest principle, our dream of
greatness.
   Most of us had not counted on the president's aides,
Cabinet officers, underlings, and pals to take this grand
new national aim so to heart in their own individual cases.
   It's such a fun administration -- half of it is under
average and the other half is under indictment.
-- Molly Ivins

Ah, said the president [Reagan] with great lucidity, "It's
true we shipped weapons to Iran, but they were *defensive*
weapons." If the man had a brain, he'd play with it.
-- Molly Ivins

Aside from tempting idiosyncrasies -- such as her sweet,
feminine little pearl-handled revolver, which can make such
a sweet, feminine little pearl-handled bullet hole -- Mrs.
Reagan should be given a walk.  Acquit her of malign
political intent; the best evidence is that she is
infinitely more interested in clothes than in any public
issue.
-- Molly Ivins

George Bush's distinguished career as a raving twit suffered
a serious setback when he went _mano a mano_ with Dan Rather
and came out looking more like Chuck Bronson than Tweetie
Bird, his usual alter ego.
   "It was like combat," burbled the Veeper a day later, "...
that guy makes Lesley Stahl look like a pussy."  I knew
my man was back in form. 
-- Molly Ivins

The Czar himself [William Bennett] is a drug addict.  He's
got a three-pack-a-day tobacco jones he just can't lick.
Happily, his drug has been legalized.  But he knows full
well this is not the solution for people addicted to
*dangerous* drugs.  (According to the Surgeon General, 2,000
people in the United States died of cocaine use last year.
In the same year, cigarettes killed 390,000.)
-- Molly Ivins

Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.
-- Molly Ivins

We have a president [Bush] who vetoed Congress's first
effort to raise the minimum wage in thirteen years but
supports a tax break for the richest people in the nation,
and House Democrats are offended that anyone should
introduce the notion of class-warfare politics into the
discussion?  You could have knocked me over with Dan Quayle's
brain.
-- Molly Ivins

As a devout believer in post-election gloating, I
particularly enjoyed the spectacle of Reagan Republicans
undergoing conversion experiences on the abortion issue --
especially those who converted after talking to their wives,
with whom they apparently have long talks every twenty-five
years or so.  I haven't seen so many people getting right
with God since my last tent revival.
-- Molly Ivins

It's one thing for America to root for, encourage, and
reward the blossoming of democracy.  That's what our country
stands for, those are our most fundamental principles.  But
nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the
Constitution of the United States is there anything about a
free economic system, free markets, or free enterprise.
Some of our closest allies have socialist or mixed
economies, and some have higher standards of living than we
do.  (We now rank fifth behind Switzerland, Germany, Denmark,
and Sweden, with Japan closing fast.)
-- Molly Ivins

We need a national economic policy that spreads investment
more widely and more wisely than we do now -- and that takes
account of the environmental impact of economic activity.
We'll be doing no great favor to the people of Eastern
Europe if we insist on exporting the state corporatism that
increasingly dominates our own economy and that Republicans
keep confusing with freedom.
-- Molly Ivins

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
-- Montaigne

We can easily reduce our detractors to absurdity and show
them their hostility is groundless.  But what does this
prove?  That their hatred is _real_.  When every slander has
been rebutted, every misconception cleared up, every false
opinion about us overcome, intolerance itself will remain
finally irrefutable.
-- Moritz Goldstein
   "Deutsch-judischer Parnass"

In theory, there is no difference between theory and
practice.  In practice, there is.
-- Muffy Barkocy

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on
earth.
-- Muhammad Ali
   "Time," 1978

Sometimes you wake up.  Sometimes the fall kills you.  And
sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
-- N. Gaiman

Sleepers, awake.  Sleep is separateness; the cave of
solitude is the cave of dreams, the cave of the passive
spectator.  To be awake is to participate, carnally and not
in fantasy, in the feast; the great communion.
-- N.O. Brown

When nothing else remains, one must scream.  Silence is the
ultimate crime against humanity.
-- Nadezhda Mandelstam

Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but
undreamt of in the living of a single life.
-- Nadine Gordimer
   "Selecting my Stories"

Politics is not how you vote, it is how you live.  It is not
how you choose, but how you think.
-- Nancy Fox

I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone
takes them away.
-- Nancy Mitford

We women do talk too much, but even then we don't tell half
what we know.
-- Nancy Witcher
   Lady Astor

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who
are silent.
-- Napoleon

To make the point [that homosexuals hamper military
effectiveness] I'd say that you would have to sift through
your military history till you find an instance in which
failure has been attributed to the presence of homosexuals
on the losing side.  I'm not aware of any such case in the
past 2500 years, but I'd be interested to hear what you
find.
-- Nathan Engle

Happiness is as a butterfly which,when pursued is always
beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words
absolutely disappear into the thought.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Its a shame people are judged on the basis of their color.
Me?  I'm in favor of judging people on the basis of their
flavor -- I think everyone would be much happier if this
were the norm.
-- Neal Rauhauser

You are simply naive or repressed because penis envy is here
and it's now and it's all around you.
-- Neal Wickham

What does a starving programmer look like?  I've never met
one.
-- Neil Hamilton

There's a common component of scientific thought which says
that a) if you're not a convicted Scientist then you can't
get involved in discussions about Science and b) Science is
all about Progress and means that things will always get
better if Scientists are in Control.
-- Neil Lewis

Tomorrow is a figment of the rest of your life.
-- Neil Perret-Green

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be
regarded as real.
-- Neils Bohr

I've always been fascinated at the way that Taco Hell folks
fold the burritos.  It's always the same.  I've had salt
burritos in Houston, Portland, Boston, and who knows where
else and they've always been folded the exact same way.
Makes me have faith in American fast food.  Cardboard
"tortilla" on paper, lather on beans, salt, sauce, roll,
roll, fold with the paper, roll with the paper.  Efficient,
fresh, clean.
-- Nelson Minar

I think that the really excellent homophobes should be
preserved in Lucite so that succeeding generations can
wonder at them, too.
-- Vincent Manis
Funny that you should say that -- when I was in Houston last
Christmas I had the chance to see an art exhibit at the
Museum of Fine Arts, something from the 50s.  It was exactly
what you describe: ordinary, everyday garbage encased in
lucite.
-- Nelson Minar

Michelangelo's David would not be funded by Jesse Helms.
It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to
be destroyed.
-- Nelson Minar

There are lots of things I'd like to be someday, but
"normal" is definitely not one of them.
-- Nelson Minar

Strike a pose, not a queer!
-- Nelson Minar

I look forward to the era of sexual interaction at a
distance.  Think what soc.motss will be like then!  20 year
old GWM seeks interesting intelligent men with highspeed
network connections for mutual networking.  I can handle any
schema-based world interface, but particular prefer the
X.523 standard.
-- Nelson Minar

I'm black latex and you're heavyweight motor oil.  Whatever
you say bounces off me and sticks to yoil.
-- Nelson Minar

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are
no winners, but all are losers.
-- Neville Chamberlain

[After the mourners at his funeral have eaten a cake that
contains his ashes:]  Therefore the eulogist can say "There
is a little piece of Will inside all of us."
-- William Parsons
What's the big deal?  A lot of people have had a little piece
of you inside them while you're still alive...
-- Nick Fitch

Scariest moment: when I feel gutsy enough to monkey with
Unix innards.  And then find out the hard way that I should
not be doing that.  Coolest moment: when I undo what ever I
did at the scariest moment.  Weirdest thing: I always go
mess with it again.
-- Nicolas Cascarano

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another
profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes that can be
made in a very narrow field.
-- Niels Bohr

Billions of neutrinos are passing in all directions through
your body, as you read these words; by the time you pause to
think about them, they have gone on their way, out past the
orbit of the moon.
-- Nigel Calder

If all we do when we try to fight for rights is ask for the
same treatment as straight people, we may end up in a
position where we can't easily ask for more and while our
rights are protected our needs are ignored.  Recognition of
our needs is a very important part of gaining our rights.
-- Nigel Whitfield

Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build
bridges even when there are no rivers.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

As I watched the seagulls, I thought, "That's the road to
take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute
trust."
-- Nikos Kazantzakis

All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness
is a simple frugal heart.
-- Nikos Kazantzakis

All over the place, from the popular culture to the
propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people
feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can
have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
-- Noam Chomsky

ELYOT: Death's very laughable, such a cunning little
mystery.  All done with mirrors.

AMANDA: Darling. I do believe you're talking nonsense.

ELYOT: So is everybody else in the long run.  Let's be
superficial and pity the poor philosophers.  Let's blow
trumpets and squeakers, and enjoy the party as much as we
can, like very small, quite idiotic school children.  Let's
savor the delight of the moment.  Come kiss me darling,
before your body rots and worms pop in and out of your eye
sockets.
-- Noel Coward
   "Private Lives," Act II (1930)

Why explore the Universe?  It is almost ironic that we
should have to ask this question because it is almost as
though we have to apologize for our highest attributes...
we went to Mars, not because of our technology, but because
of our imagination.
-- Norman Cousins

Justice is too good for some people and not good enough for
the rest.
-- Norman Douglas

Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats.
-- O'Neill

When you strike a flowing river, no trace remains in the
water.
-- O-Sensei Morehei Ueshiba

Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on
too long.
-- Ogden Nash

People who have what they want are very fond of telling
people who haven't what they want that they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash

There are many people who dislike *anything* that's
"different." It starts in school; kids who don't follow
fashion and are wearing the "wrong" clothes, for example,
are often nagged about this.  This may be extended to other
kinds of "differentness," and even become so extreme as to
provoke violence towards people who don't uphold "society's
values" (whatever they may be, and whatever they may
actually be worth).  Of course, they who do this are wrong
and evil.[*] Don't take this literally, of course!  The
trouble with this viewpoint is that you must be very careful
not to do the same; this makes it more difficult/
complicated for me to try to change the world than it is for
"them".  I can only try to set an example, "they" can use
violence.
-- Olaf Seibert

Obedience.  A religion of slaves.  A religion of
intellectual death.  I like it.  Don't ask questions, don't
think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it has been
conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy
Rolex on his wrist.  I like that job!  Where can I sign up?
-- Oleg Kiselev

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love,
an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
-- Oliver Goldsmith

I don't recall your name, but your manners are familiar.
-- Oliver Herford

Diplomacy: Lying in state. 
-- Oliver Herford

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.  The more
light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more
imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the
principle of free thought -- not free thought for those who
agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
   1928

To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual
freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state
unpopular views also deprives others of the right to listen
to those views.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
   1928

Free speech is a barrier to the tyranny of authoritarian or
even majority opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of
particular doctrines or thoughts.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
   1928

Shock, hurt, and anger are not consequences to be weighed
lightly.  No member of the community with a decent respect
for others should use, or encourage others to use, slurs and
epithets intended to discredit another's race, ethnic group,
religion, or sex.  [Yet] it may sometimes be necessary in a
university for civility and mutual respect to be superseded
by the need to guarantee free expression.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
   1928

A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its
original dimension.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Human nature: what makes you swear at a pedestrian when you
are driving and at the driver when you are a pedestrian.
-- Oren Arnold

If someone asks you 'Do you believe?' and you do not answer
'In what?' then you have written a blank check on your
brain, and it shall surely come back marked 'insufficient
funds'."
-- Orson Scott Card
   at a "Secular Humanist Revival Meeting," 1966

The only way to learn is by changing your mind.
-- Orson Scott Card

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an
artist has always to be out of step with his time.
-- Orson Welles

I am no more humble than my talents require. 
-- Oscar Levant

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and
sharpen my tongue.
-- Oscar Levant

[of Doris Day:] I knew her before she was a virgin.
-- Oscar Levant

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the
real tinsel underneath.
-- Oscar Levant

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you
remember.
-- Oscar Levant

The only different between the saint and the sinner is that
every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
-- Oscar Wilde

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays
saying things against one, behind one's back, that are
absolutely and entirely true.
-- Oscar Wilde

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of
the artist, not of the sitter.
-- Oscar Wilde

The Americans are certainly great hero-worshippers, and
always take their heroes from the criminal class.
-- Oscar Wilde

Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
-- Oscar Wilde

It's better to have a permanent income than to be
fascinating.
-- Oscar Wilde

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism.  By
giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in
touch with the ignorance of the community.
-- Oscar Wilde

Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his
friends.
-- Oscar Wilde

Disobedience was man's first virtue.
-- Oscar Wilde

Now art should never try to be popular.  The public should
try to make itself artistic.
-- Oscar Wilde

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
-- Oscar Wilde

There are three sorts of despots.  There is the despot who
tyrannizes over the body.  There is the despot who
tyrannizes over the soul.  There is the despot who
tyrannizes over the soul *and* body alike.  The first is
called the Prince.  The second is called the Pope.  The
third is called the People.
-- Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked
about, and that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a
sinner.  Conscience makes egotists of us all.
-- Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he
is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of
reason.
-- Oscar Wilde

To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be
inartistic.
-- Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
-- Oscar Wilde

Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to
be faithless and cannot.
-- Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
-- Oscar Wilde

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of
it is absolutely fatal.
-- Oscar Wilde
   "The Critic as Artist"

Ah!  don't say that you agree with me.  When people agree
with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral
duty to speak one's mind.  It becomes a pleasure.
-- Oscar Wilde

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure.  It
is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.  What more can
one want?
-- Oscar Wilde

The only thing one can do with good advice is pass it on.
It is never of any use to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde

The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect
everything; the young know everything.
-- Oscar Wilde

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have
its fascination.  When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will
cease to be popular.
-- Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. 
-- Oscar Wilde

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is
obviously quite easy.  It merely requires a certain amount
of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and
a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.
-- Oscar Wilde

Anybody can be good in the country; there are no temptations
there.
-- Oscar Wilde

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat
overestimated his ability.
-- Oscar Wilde

Democracy means simply the burgeoning of the people by the
people for the people.
-- Oscar Wilde

The advantage of emotions is that they lead us astray.
-- Oscar Wilde

Moderation is a fatal thing.  Nothing succeeds like excess.
-- Oscar Wilde

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other
people's.
-- Oscar Wilde

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to
it. 
-- Oscar Wilde

We have so much in common with the Americans -- except, of
course, language.
-- Oscar Wilde

Of course, America had often been discovered before
Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
-- Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little
useless information.
-- Oscar Wilde

To believe is very dull.  To doubt is intensely engrossing.
To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is
to die.
-- Oscar Wilde

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in
favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the
uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the
community.
-- Oscar Wilde

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to
alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde

Don't try to compete with Beethoven.  After all, he isn't
competing with you.
-- Otto Luening

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or
before an election.
-- Otto von Bismarck

A little caution outflanks a large cavalry. 
-- Otto von Bismarck

Well I follow the *way* called Floating Anarchy and practice
Guerilla Ontology in the quest of same.  The goal is to find
out where the *good shit* is and buffer yourself from the
bad shit.  Of course these are subjective judgments, subject
to shifting tastes.  It's a lot like surfing, actually.
-- Owen Rowley

So while a new generation of motss-folk come on board and
learn to deal with the world -- the net -- the prevailing
reality, I have only this to say to those who think it a
sport to engage us here: Think well about how far you want
to push, understand that there ain't no such thing as free
lunch, everybody pays.  

We are not going away, you are only the latest in a long
history of your kind.  You don't fool us, we know that what
you really hate is inside yourself.  We have broken through
the years of silence, we are here, we are queer, get used to
it!
-- Owen Rowley

I think _Final Exit_ is a hateful book which has encouraged
many people who are both chronically ill and depressed to
"buy in" (permanently) to this crackpot's own agenda.
-- Steve Dyer
I understand your sentiment.  This is how I feel about the
Bible. 
-- Owen Rowley

It's a dog-eat-dog world and life's too short to spend it
with fleas.
-- Owen Rowley

A democratic regime which allows its highest court to
maintain states' rights to sodomy laws based on biblical
precedent has lost its luster for me.
-- Owen Rowley

If you want to be free, act free.
-- Owen Rowley

Ya know after I admitted to myself that I really wanted men,
I looked back at my past and it was obvious!
-- Owen Rowley

That's the problem with religion: you beat your way past the
clerics, fight your way through the demons, stand before the
holy of holies, and when you rip away the veil, there's
nothing there but a mirror.
-- Owen Rowley

Notice how Colorado Amendment 2 only impacts the everyday
lives of queers unless queers pass the impact along to those
who are still first-class citizens.
-- Owen Rowley

Actually, cosmetics may well have an extra-terrestrial
origin.
-- Owen Rowley

If everybody's behavior can be explained by simple stupidity
and greed, there's no point in assuming a conspiracy.
-- P.J. Plauger

The chief enemy of creativity is "good" taste. 
-- Pablo Picasso

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
-- Pablo Picasso

Computers are useless.  They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso

A visceral recoil from homosexuality is the natural reaction
of a healthy society wishing to preserve itself.
-- Pat Buchanan
   "New York Post," March 27, 1991

The first thing you do is forget that I'm Black.  Second,
you must never forget that I'm Black.
-- Pat Parker
   "For the white person who wants to be my friend"

Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or
have some of the few remaining bits of your brain just
evaporated?
-- Patricia O'Tuama

"Butch" is a look. "Nellie" is a way of life.
-- Patrick Bell

Simple Simon met a pieman, selling poisoned pies.  Said the
pieman, "Why not try one?" as he brushed off the flies.
"Thank you, pieman!" said Simple Simon, and died, to his
surprise.
-- Patrick J. Flynn

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
-- Patti Smith

Anecdote reported in today's [Aug.  18, 1992] Herb Caen
column: A shuttle from S.F.  to the airport stopped to pick
up a bunch of "Queer Nation types" (whatever that means) on
the way to Houston to protest at the convention.  A delegate
to the convention was already on the shuttle, and after a
few "Thank God for AIDS" and "It's either them or me"
remarks was last seen trying to hail a taxi.
-- Paul Asente

I had a great experience the other day...as I was going into
the grocery store a woman asked me to sign a Perot petition.
I just looked at her sweetly and said, "I'm sorry, I'm a
homosexual and an adulterer.  I don't think he'd want my
support." I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so
stunned in my entire life.
-- Paul Asente

There is more to life than the avoidance of death.
-- Paul Asente

Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.
-- Paul Biron

"Do you know a cow was _murdered_ to make that jacket?" "I
didn't know there were any witnesses.  Now I guess I'll have
to kill you too."
-- Paul Crowley

Put your analyst on danger money, baby!
-- Paul Crowley

Part straight.  Part gay.  All queer.
-- Paul Crowley

In general, I'm in favour of hedonistic and
self-destructive activity.
-- Paul Crowley

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the
parts.
-- Paul Ehrlich

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not
quite clear to him.
-- Paul Eldridge

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into
theorems.
-- Paul Erdos

I complain often about my old age.  Now I have stopped
complaining because I can't get old anymore, the process is
finished.
-- Paul Erdos

I said I'm two and a half billion years old because when I
was young the earth was two billion years old and now it is
four and a half billion years old so I must be two and a
half billion years old.
-- Paul Erdos

You know, all of these rules that may be completely correct
for normal people, make no sense for prodigies.  To say that
Bach should pay any attention to how he was socially
adjusted is just a bad joke.
-- Paul Erdos

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. 
-- Paul Gauguin

In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there
have always been times like these.
-- Paul Harvey

Spotted on the front page of the current "Peninsula
Times Tribune":
GAY SAILOR TO RESIST DISCHARGE
All I can say is, "What control!"
-- Paul Isaacs

Recently there's been a lot of similar tantrum-throwing by
gay activists in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It does have
its price.
-- (jreece@sousa.intel.com)
I'll bet you would agree with the following statement, too.
"The people in L.A.  shouldn't be rioting, because it will
only give bigots reason to believe they are correct in their
prejudices." I'm sorry sir.  I've been sent to revoke your
cause and effect merit badge.
-- Paul Isaacs

The New Year is upon us, and perhaps it is time for a
kinder, gentler _Splat Ex Splaticus_.
-- Matthew Melmon
If the New Year weren't upon us I'd take the time to point
out that "ex" is followed by the accusative, not the
nominative.
-- Arne Adolfsen
Really?  Whenever I've got a new ex, it's always followed by
a sedative.
-- Paul Isaacs

An ignorance of history is not just stupid, it's rude.
-- Paul Jennett

Seeing is forgetting the name of that which one sees.
-- Paul Valery

I find it ironic that that arguments against affirmative
action basically assume that the lopsided power structure
that denies jobs to the poor and ill-connected will and
should continue indefinitely.
-- Paul Wallich

Is there anything safer than TV-style seriousness -- i.e.,
delivering the conventional wisdom as if it were the deeply
important truth?
-- Pauline Kael

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that's
where you renew your springs that never dry up.
-- Pearl S. Buck

Now a word to the wise: if you go out to the nekkid beach,
be sure to use 44 on your privates.  Leather weenie is
really unattractive.
-- Michael Thomas
Some of us still have Nature's Protection ...
-- Per Bothner

Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.  (Apologies to Ludwig
Wittgenstein.)
-- Peter Cash

A man should be greater than some of his parts.
-- Peter DeVries

The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.
-- Peter DeVries

The ballast of factual information, so far from being just
about to sink us, is growing daily less.  The factual burden
of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity.
As a science advances, particular facts are comprehended
within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general
statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and
compass -- whereupon the facts need no longer be known
explicitly, that is, spelled out and kept in mind.  In all
sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden
of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular.  We
need no longer record the fall of every apple.
-- Peter Medawar
   "Pluto's Republic"

What are we to make of *luck* in our methodology of science?
In the inductive view, luck strikes me as completely
inexplicable; it can arise only from the gratuitous
obtrusion of something utterly unexpected upon the senses;
it is like winning a prize in a lottery in which we did not
buy a ticket.
-- Peter Medawar
   "Pluto's Republic"

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom
of choice, but nothing to choose from.
-- Peter Ustinov

Hi, this is Peter.  Right now Alien Creatures are eating my
brain.  Please leave a message at the tone and when they are
finished one of the Alien Creatures will assume my form and
get back to you.
-- Peter da Silva
   heard occasionally on his answering machine

A man without two apothegms in his .sig is like a metaphor
without a bicycle.
-- Peter van der Linden

I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new
situation by reorganizing: and a wonderful method it can be
for creating the illusion of progress, while producing
confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
-- Petronius Arbiter

You picked a bad day.  Pat Buchanan's here, and he's passing
out a petition to get the name of the species changed to
hetero-sapien.
-- Phil
   the bar owner on "Murphy Brown"

I hope we're past this, where you go "boo" and a lot of
grown men drop their tools and run.
-- Phil Donahue

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it,
doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick

Religion. It's a limbic thing.
-- Philip Thrift

To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
-- Pierre Corneille

Scariest sentence in the English language: "We'll be in the
air momentarily."
-- Pieter Hazewindus

Wherever, therefore, it has been established that it is
shameful to be involved in homosexual relationships, this is
due to evil on the part of the legislators, to despotism on
the part of the rulers, and to cowardice on the part of the
governed.
-- Plato
   "Symposium"

There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur
loss than to make gain.
-- Plautus

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods
when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
-- Plutarch

On applause: They named it Ovation from the Latin _ovis_,
a sheep. 
-- Plutarch

I do hope Hunter Thompson is taking notes.  He's the only
journalist who can possibly do justice to this thoroughly
hallucinatory political year.
-- Polly Powledge

Listen up and listen up good: you'd better stop your car
filled with forensic sleight-of-hand and heed the
track-crossing signal of rhetorical propriety before you are
run over by the locomotive of public opinion!
-- Polly Powledge

I shudder to think how deliberately unaware you strive to
make yourself.
-- Bob Sarver
Whereas it just comes naturally to you, huh?
-- Polly Powledge

That letter I got back from the Denver Metro Convention
folks that really ticked me off: at several points, it
reminded me that _at the present time_, Denver, Boulder, and
Aspen's antidiscrimination laws still stand.  Like it's
somehow *unfair* for me to get upset about CO:2 before
January 4th.  Hell, you know they're desperate when they're
coming up with feeble defenses like "What are you so upset
about?  You don't lose your rights until January 3rd!  Say,
haven't you ever heard of 'living one day at a time'?"
-- Polly Powledge

Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the
world is ruled?
-- Pope Julius III

(Humanity) is the measure of all things. 
-- Protagoras

Discord gives a relish for concord.
-- Publilius Syrus

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publilius Syrus

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing
opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that
other people think about us.
-- Quentin Crisp

My parents, at least my mother, imagined that what I wanted
was love while I really wanted abject obedience.
-- Quentin Crisp

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
-- Quentin Crisp

A man who looks 28 until he is well into his 40s does not
suddenly wake up one morning and look 29.
-- Quentin Crisp

*Real* wizards don't whine about how they paid their dues.
-- Quentin Johnson

Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss
without such trials as came to those who passed before you?
-- Quran

When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him.  You have given a
definite answer to a definite problem.  For better or worse
you have acted decisively.  In a way, the next move is up to
him.
-- R.A. Lafferty

The imposition of stigma is the commonest form of violence
used in democratic societies.
-- R.A. Pinker

Schizophrenia is a successful attempt not to adapt to
pseudo-social realities.
-- R.D. Laing

Ignorance simplifies *any* problem. 
-- R. Lucke

Man is a born child, his power is the power of growth.
-- Rabindrath Tagore

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority; the
test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
-- Ralph W. Stockman

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a
man from the vexation of thinking.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man has a right to be valued by his best moment.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games
with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last
honesty and truth.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled
is there any hope for them.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what
we can.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of
the universe.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

*Want* is a growing giant whom the coat of *have* was never
large enough to cover.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters
compared to what lies within us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of
others as it is to invent.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hospitality consists of a little fire, a little food, and an
immense quiet.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every reform was once a private opinion. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The foolish man wonders at the unusual; the wise man at the
usual.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A chief event of life is the day in which we have
encountered a mind that startled us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were
real; perhaps they are.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no knowledge that is not power.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and
commits suicide. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man carefully examines his thoughts, he will be
surprised to find how much he lives in the future.  His
well-being is always ahead.  Such a creature is probably
immortal.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fame is proof that people are gullible. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who will protect the public when the police violate the law?
-- Ramsey Clark

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can
take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark

Birth Control is disgusting -- people using each other for
pleasure.
-- Randall Terry
   Chairman, Operation Rescue

Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling
as any other fragile and precious thing.
-- Randolph S. Bourne

I wish I could add something pithy about the [Republican]
convention (rather than just sardonic), but part of the
horror I feel is that I am *not* surprised in the least.  In
a way, it's the most honest thing the GOP has done in years.
-- Randy Clark

Grammar is not a vice (though excessive picking at it can
be).  And nonstandard words/grammar can be used to good
effect -- but no one can do that without knowing *how*
they're deviating.
-- Randy Clark

The idea that there is a platonic message that can somehow
be divorced from "unimportant" details of presentation is,
like solipsism, less in need of a refutation than a cure.
-- Randy Clark

Yes, you can get AIDS from a mosquito ...  *if* you have
unprotected receptive anal intercourse with an infected
mosquito....
-- Randy Shilts

I was curious as to what Hinduism says about homosexuality.
I am sure it must be addressed.
-- Devesh S. Khatu
Why do you say that "it must be addressed?" What has
Hinduism to say about photon torpedoes?
-- Ravi K. Prasanth

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that
differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
-- Rebecca West

The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it.
-- Reggie Jackson

Sometimes truth comes riding into history on the back of
error.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but
man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

An object never serves the same function as its image -- or
its name.
-- Rene Magritte

What will we do about the bisexuals?  If you let them in,
they'll be dating everyone on the ship?
-- Rep. Robert Dornan
   defending the current Pentagon policy of barring homosexuals
   from the military, on the Today show, 5/27/92

Modern times are an awkward spectacle.  On the one hand, our
public selves compete for scarce window space, for the
opportunity to see in and to where power is decided and
used.  On the other, private life recedes like a glacier, a
translucent corner of heaven meant only to be photographed,
never settled.
-- Revel

Our educational systems may very well be on the threshold of
a new and even gloomier Dark Age of the 20th and 21st
centuries, unless the anti- intellectualism and confused
thinking creationists produce is overcome.
-- Reverend James Skehan

The problem isn't that the victim can't fight, the problem
is that they have to.  Saying that self-defense classes are
the answer to gay bashers is like saying that it would be
good if the government stopped prosecuting rape cases and
used the money saved to hand out free mace.
-- Richard Caley

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain
that there are vastly more ways of being dead.
-- Richard Dawkins

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and
you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

How can a man of integrity get along in Washington?
-- Richard Feynman

What are we to make of a system that blames us for failing
to procreate while refusing us custody of our children?
That perpetuates the myth that we are weaklings while
denying us the right to serve in the military?  That regards
us as incapable of forming stable relationships while
forbidding us to marry?
-- Richard Goldstein
   in the "Gay Life 1991" segment of The Village Voice

What is a committee?  A group of the unwilling, picked from
the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
-- Richard Harkness

We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of
achievement.
-- Richard J. Daley

I used to catch Star Trek once in a while in France.  The
best dubbed episode was with the Gorn: the butch, lizard-y
thing with cubic zirconias for eyes.  He ended up sounding
like one of many Parisian cafe workers who would shout out
"grande creme" or whatever to the person tending bar.
Perhaps the Gorn smoked Gitanes?
-- Richard Johnson

We're thinking of having a bi-party at our place in about
two weeks.  It will be drug-free, alcohol-free, etc.
-- Tom Limoncelli
"Etc.?"  Food-free?  Dust-free?  Republican-free?  What is
this, a get-together or an advertisement for moral Windex?
-- Richard Johnson

I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our
ego and concern to be different, the African apes would be
included in our family, the Hominidae.
-- Richard Leakey

Seen on a lesbian's T-Shirt at the Louisville Pride March:
STRICTLY VAGITARIAN
-- Richard McKewen

The people here [in Nicaragua] are amazingly friendly, when
you figure we're here to overthrow their government.
-- Richard Melton
   US Ambassador to Nicaragua

What are schools for if not indoctrination against
communism? 
-- Richard Nixon

Voters quickly forget what a man says.
-- Richard Nixon

Sure there are dishonest men in local government.  But there
are dishonest men in national government too.
-- Richard Nixon

Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer
(not advised) are called hardware; those program
instructions that you can only curse at are software.
-- Richard P. Brennan

Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that
maxim is not an honest man.
-- Richard Whately
   Archbishop of Dublin

We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and
unappeased, frequently seeks and finds a substitute in
religion.
-- Richard von Krafft-Ebing

I write by putting a few words on paper widely spaced, then
going back to fill in the blanks.
-- Ring Lardner

Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
-- Rita Mae Brown

If the world were a logical place, men would ride
side-saddle.
-- Rita Mae Brown

If Michelangelo were a heterosexual the Sistine Chapel would
have been painted basic white and with a roller.
-- Rita Mae Brown

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or
whom to love.  The only queer people are those who don't
love anybody.
-- Rita Mae Brown

See my big frustration here is that my main squeeze has
turned out to be a Late Blooming Nerd, and is in the habit
of (in the midst of cuddling) saying sweet things like "you
think if I disable the caching it would work?"
-- Ro Reid

When catching fireflies, the mouth of the jar must be large
enough to encompass the past, present, and future of the
firefly. 
-- Ro Reid

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take 10 minutes and a
program that will feed all the hungry people in the world.
The fact that stores charge 60 cents for a buttered roll is
disgusting.
-- Ro Reid

I am many things, and it seems artificial to rank them.  At
dinner time, I'm hungry first.
-- Rob Bernardo

I'm not sure why you seem to be referring to homosexuality
as a lifestyle.  It's a sexual orientation, and has very
little to do with the style in which one conducts one's
life.  Furthermore sexual orientation is not a behavior
(although it can motivate a behavior); sexual orientation is
a feature of the mind.  Additionally, it is not known
whether sexual orientation is due to nature or nurture, but
it is certainly not chosen (i.e.  in a conscious way), say
in the way someone chooses a college or an employer.  And
finally, *even if* if was a matter of choice, the
distinction you make between no control and choice is
irrelevant: religious and political belief and marital
status are things we *do* have control over, and yet as a
society we believe no one should be discriminated against on
those grounds.
-- Rob Bernardo

The goodness of morals depends upon what the morals say, not
just the fact that they are morals.
-- Rob Bernardo

Evil doesn't exist outside of people's desires to do bad
things.  It's simply a label for a person's characteristics.
-- Rob Bernardo

The Kinsey scale less its sexual orientation content is
simply an empty scale, a set of consecutive numbers.  Scales
can be used for lots of things.  Scales are used in music.
And fish have scales.  There are also the scales of justice.
-- Rob Bernardo

Saying that the just overturned systems of eastern Europe
are proof the socialism isn't good or doesn't work, is sort
of like saying that a particular Christian church that
failed in producing ethical behavior in its adherents is
proof that we need to abandon the Golden Rule and start
being nasty to each other.
-- Rob Bernardo

Certe, Toto, sentio nos in Kansate non iam adesse.  For
those who don't know Latin: Breath mints, Toto, send to the
nose of Kansas no dog food from Odessa.  "Nose of" is the
Latin equivalent of our expression "armpit of"; the Romans
didn't think highly of that part of the face.
-- Rob Bernardo

I thought someone was promiscuous if they slept with as many
people as I only wish to.  I thought someone was a slut if
they slept with more people than I'd wish to.
-- Rob Bernardo

The moment they stop taking it up the ass and in the mouth
is the day they can start telling me what to do.
-- Bil Snodgrass
While an anti-gay hypocrite is worse than an anti-gay
non-hypocrite, neither can start telling us what to do.
-- Rob Bernardo

Having a purpose that conflicts with some moral
responsibility does not *in itself* excuse one from that
moral responsibility.

We're a street gang.  We're here to reclaim our manhood.
We're allowed to beat up fags when they interfere with our
manhood.

We're Fundamentalists.  We're here to show you Jesus.  We're
allowed to work against people's civil liberties when they
conflict with our religion.

We're a corporation.  We're here to make a profit.  We're
allowed to do something that makes the world a worse place.

-- Rob Bernardo

Using the term "family values" is like using the term
"morals".  Ya know, everyone's got morals unless of course
they don't follow mine.
-- Rob Bernardo

To some extent any use of language (and conceptual
categories) distorts reality by coercing instances into
types.
-- Rob Bernardo

What does promiscuous mean today -- more sex than you are
getting or more sex than I am getting?
-- Rob Bernardo

I can understand the desire we have to label ourselves, to
find some pre-existing category into which we can stuff
ourselves for a feeling of identification.  But most anytime
you try to reduce something to a category you run into
problems, because almost all the time the world just doesn't
fit into categories.
-- Rob Bernardo

Do you really think Clinton is on your side just because he
says so?  Politicians are on one side only...  their own.
-- Rob Bruce

As all Detroit locals know, Big Beaver Road is exit 69 off
of I-75.  :{)
-- Rob Foye

We have the most [thorough] test guy in the world...  [I
showed him this program and he asked,] "But Rob, what if
time runs backward?"
-- Rob Kolstad

It was a bird's-eye view, provided the bird was on the
ground.
-- Rob Lines

If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit
pressing a lever to get a "fix" of something, to its own
detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more
addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for
what he does not want merely because *you* think it would be
good for him.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no
obsessions.
-- Robert Bly

It is amusing to find oneself thought to be very different
from what one is, especially as one knows that one cannot
really be at all like what one imagines oneself to be.  It
is a sort of trinity -- three persons in one ass.
-- Robert Bridges

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,/ The fate of
empires and the fall of kings;/ While quacks of State must
each produce his plan,/ And even children lisp the Rights of
Man;/ Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,/ The Rights
of Woman merit some attention./
-- Robert Burns
   Address on "The Rights of Woman"

Not some church, and not the state,/ Not some dark
capricious fate./ Who you are, and when you lose,/ Comes
only from the things you choose.
-- Robert C. White Jr.

Did you know there are only forty-four sounds in the English
language?  Forty-four!
-- Tim Pierce
And about three thousand ways to spell each one of them?
-- FJ van Wingerde
Now dear, you know it could be worse.  I don't know how many
sounds there are in Dutch, but I do know a substantial
number of them are unpronounceable.
-- Jess Anderson
Now, now, Jess.  I have to point out that, of the 44 sounds
in English, at least 60 of them are unpronounceable.
-- Robert Coren

Blind acceptance of the government's policies is a concept
inimical to true freedom.
-- Robert Coren

If the automobile had followed the same development as the
computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million
miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone
inside.
-- Robert Cringely
   "InfoWorld"

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve
greatly.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is
not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant.
The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what
they say about their opponents.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not
prescribe means.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
-- Robert Firth

If you meet the Buddha on the net, put him in your kill
file.
-- Robert Firth

You don't have to flaunt technical ability in order to
benefit from it.  If you have the capability to play a
million notes, and then you play only three notes, that
lends an amazing profundity to the three notes you did
choose.
-- Robert Fripp
   (paraphrased)

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and  ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost

The best way out is always through. 
-- Robert Frost

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair
weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
-- Robert Frost

A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in
a quarrel.
-- Robert Frost

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work,
the rest willing to let them.
-- Robert Frost

Be aware of wonder.  Remember the little seed in the
Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and
nobody really knows how or why, *but we are all like that*.
-- Robert Fulghum

An honest god is the noblest work of man.  ...  God has
always resembled his creators.  He hated and loved what they
hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of
those in power.  ...  Most of the gods were pleased with
sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been
considered a divine perfume.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll

We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written.
-- Robert Gould Shaw
   abolitionist

There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money
either.
-- Robert Graves

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.  All
other "sins" are invented nonsense.  (Hurting yourself is
not sinful-- just stupid.)
-- Robert Heinlein

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination
from ambush.  It will be a slow extinction from apathy,
indifference, and undernourishment.
-- Robert Hutchins
   "Great Books" 1954

Why is it that when you have a partner, the whole world just
opens up its legs and invites you in?
-- Robert-John Evans

One thing I don't care about is if the person next to me in
the bar has something poppy-uppy between the legs.  That
would just be plain silly.
-- Robert-John Evans

People don't ask for facts in making up their minds.  They
would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a
dozen facts.
-- Robert Keith Leavitt

We used to be a gentle, angry people.  Now we're just angry.
-- Robert Kelly

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson

The rich never feel so good as when they are speaking of
their possessions as responsibilities.
-- Robert Lynd

True love-sickness is not desire for possession, but only a
gentle unveiling of the world itself.
-- Robert Musil

Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings.  The
expectations are always high, and the results usually
disappointing.
-- Robert Orben

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm
looking for the truth," and so it goes away.  Puzzling.
-- Robert Pirsig

Sacred cows make great hamburgers. 
-- Robert Reiner

Life would be so much simpler if closet doors were made
illegal.
-- Robert W. Gill

Sometimes I think that most everybody really needs to be
slapped *really* hard just to jump-start their human
dignity.
-- Robert White

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
-- Robertson Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory
future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.
-- Robertson Davies
   "A Voice from the Attic," 1960

You can fool some of the people some of the time, and jerk
the rest off.
-- Robin Williams

We Americans, we're a simple people...  but piss us off, and
we'll bomb your cities.
-- Robin Williams
   "Good Morning Vietnam"

The Dachaus ...  must remain standing because they are a
monument in time when some men decided to turn the Earth
into a graveyard.  Into it they shoveled all of their
reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all,
their conscience.  And the moment we forget this, the moment
we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become
the gravediggers...
-- Rod Serling
   "Deathshead Revisited"

The mass media is supported and sustained by commercial
entities.  And corn flakes and Shakespeare are simply not
kissing cousins.  Leonard Bernstein and living bras are
incompatible.  And you cannot sustain adult, probing,
meaningful drama when the proceedings are interrupted every
twelve minutes by a dozen dancing rabbits with toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling

Bob and Alan and Matthew would have us all act like "normal"
gays in the dubious belief that this might give clueless
straights a better image of homosexuals and make it easier
for "normal" gays to emerge from their closets.  When some
of us respond in our glorious diversity that we have other
priorities, like maybe realizing our full-individual-human-
potential-unfettered-by-the-straitjacket-of-irrelevant-
gender-roles-and-expectations, and if those guys had half a
clue between them they'd realize that those same clueless
straights will hate them just as viciously whether they're
in three-piece gray flannel or a fucking tutu, but thanks
all the same.
-- Rod Williams

A famous gay bar, The Black Cat, had its liquor license
suspended under some law that prohibited knowingly serving
liquor to sexual perverts (or something like that).  The
owner took the case to the California Supreme Court and won,
claiming that said perverts had a constitutional right of
equal access to a cocktail.
-- Rod Williams

But I already know the words 'umbra' and 'pneumbra'...
-- J.N. Shaumeyer
Lemme guess -- the shadow cast by a set of Michelin Radials?
-- Rod Williams

Middle America is the place or state-of-mind from which
refugees are constantly in flight, and to which immigrants
and deportees constantly return.  It covers the whole
country, it's the TV and movies we watch, the symbols and
code-words that cause us to salivate on cue, the newspapers,
magazines and books we read, the music we listen to, the
poor we blame, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the
"others" -- people not like us -- we fear and hate, the
stuff we buy.  It invades our dreams.  But for eternal
vigilance, it would swallow us whole.
-- Rod Williams

I just thought a reply from one straight (for what that
matters) to another straight in front of a full house might
have some value.
-- Bill Baker

It did indeed.  But my royal flush beats both your two
straights, *and* the full house.  
-- Rod Williams

I keep forgetting that inalienable rights are based on
popularity contests.
-- Rod Williams

I think it's important that the majority of all people, gay
or straight, be embarrassed about something every day.
Might make the world a place less to be embarrassed about.
-- Rod Williams

Even the thought of Boxer remaining in Washington does not
dim the exuberant glee with which I look upon term
restrictions, passed so handily throughout the nation.
-- Matthew Melmon
...  which, as incumbents romped home so handily throughout
the nation, one bright commentator on the box last night
described as stop-me-before-I-re-elect-again laws.
-- Rod Williams

We went to the Manhattan [in Paris] instead.  This is a
really seedy bar with an underground dance floor and walls
which are decorated with lycra in tropical prints.  I am
still trying to figure out why a bar named "Manhattan" was
festooned with Hawaiian decorations, Ahh, these silly
French.
-- Michael Portuesi
Not so silly -- it was undoubtedly named for Manhattan,
Kansas.
-- Rod Williams

What's the point of self-restraint if you can get someone
else to do it *for* you?
-- Roger Klorese

What would I want him for?  The girlfriend fixes dinner,
does the dishes, does the laundry, cleans the house.  What
more do I need?
-- Justin Sullivan
Morals.  And a time machine to help you find the last decade
of the twentieth century.
-- Roger Klorese

[sig:] nelson@reed.edu \/  Love under will
Who is Will?  And why's he always on top?
-- Roger Klorese

I propose we create two motss groups: soc.motss.nice, and
soc.motss.nasty.
-- Nelson Minar
What's the difference? 
-- Roger Klorese

Some of us (like you) seem to think that if discrimination
is simply ignored and disavowed, it will go away; others of
us (like me) believe that illegal and improper
discrimination must be remedied, not just disavowed, and
that one tool which can be used to correct discrimination is
compensation, which you choose to brand with the
"discrimination" boogieman as if discrimination itself is
improper.  It is not; illegal discrimination is.
-- Roger Klorese

The terms "hard science" and "soft science" are designed by
what you call "hard scientists" to lead us to see the latter
as less rigorous, less significant, and less scientific.
The terms I used show the situation as I see it: the "hard
sciences" as you call them are, if not anti-human, less
mindful of the validity of human values and inputs, and more
based on the myth of impartial observation.
-- Roger Klorese

If I had a degree, it would be in Literary Criticism and
Cinema Studies.  I would *never* consider a technical
degree; how-to stuff, I think, should be self-taught or
trade-school- taught.  Training has nothing to do with
education, which is what belongs in universities.
-- Roger Klorese

I maintain that it is my studies of humanities subjects that
have given me my analytical abilities and the empathy it
takes to work on user satisfaction issues, and the enabling
technology of computers is a minor nuts'n'bolts thing,
overvalued as "education."
-- Roger Klorese

I really don't care what it [Serano's "Pisschrist"] looks
like.  I'm just *pissed* that I had to help pay for it.
-- Mark Wilson
Yeah, well, I'm pissed that I had to pay for war, for
defense-related R&D, and lots of other bogosity, which is
far more "against my religion" than a reverent work like
Pisschrist could ever be against yours.  Paying for things
where you may not believe in every line item is part of what
living in a society is all about.
-- Roger Klorese

I may vote for Perot...

...if you wish to vote for a liar, a cheat, a tyrant, and an
international criminal.  Granted, George Bush has done most
of the same things.  But when you take the trash out to the
curb, do you bring in a new load?
-- Roger Klorese

Rewriting the dictionary is a necessary part of the process
of learning about ourselves.  Or is matter still made of
phlogiston?!
-- Roger Klorese

If you need to be told, rather than having the miniscule
number of brain cells it takes to figure out that you should
*ask* exactly to what extent your participation is welcome,
then I'd rather spend the carbon dioxide it takes to form
those sounds feeding a tree than lecturing you.
-- Roger Klorese

I am a human first.  The rest is unimportant.  But being
queer contributes more of the parts of me that I value than
being American does.
-- Roger Klorese

Everything is sex if you do it right.
-- Roger Klorese

Richard Feynman may have been a brilliant scientist, but he
was also an unenlightened, sexist, bigoted, egocentric
asshole.  Appealing to him as a spiritual model leaves one
more than a little short in the humanity department.
-- Roger Klorese

Then who's been going through my garbage?
-- Andrew Solovay
Usually we call it "reading your postings"; your terminology
is so much more succinct, though.
-- Roger Klorese

We've already observed areas with standing laws and
concurrent anti-discrimination policies.  I'm not sure that
repeal makes any significant impact on society, as it deals
with what we (or rather, some of us) do, rather than what we
*are*.
-- Roger Klorese

This must be too tough for the critical abilities you
[Melmon] seem to have found in a Cracker Jack box.
-- Roger Klorese

A restaurant is a whorehouse that does food instead
of sex. 
-- Roger Lustig

But time will fix it, and it will be my turn to set myself
up as the pompous sage without a fuck.
-- Matthew Melmon
Butcha *are*, Matt, ya *are*!
-- Roger Phillips

There seems to be a mindset which abhors peace, beauty,
fragility, or whatever you want to call it.  It can't see a
bubble without wanting to burst it.  It's overwhelmingly
found in men rather than women, and more so in the young.
(At school, I had a habit of balancing pencils on their
ends.  I always hoped that, one day, I'd meet someone whose
initial reaction was not to bump the desk.  In the end, I
stopped balancing pencils.)
-- Roger Phillips

I just burst out laughing so hard in the CS Lab all the
people around me started looking nervous and whispering "Oh
God!  What are the homosexuals happy about now?"
-- Ron Buckmire

Nobody believes the official spokesman ...  but everybody
trusts an unidentified source.
-- Ron Nessen
   1977

First AIDS came for the homosexuals, then the hemophiliacs,
then the IV drug users, then their families, then *their*
sexual partners, ....  Eventually, like Martin Niemoller,
we're gonna run out of groups of "others."
-- Ron Rizzo

Most dramatic differences have no moral dimension, except as
indications of the intrinsic arbitrariness and unfairness of
life.
-- Ron Rizzo

The Peace Corps: capitalist Komsomol, driving the conistogas
of consumerism across the prairie of the world's poor.
-- Ron Rizzo

The first time I was naked in a bed with another boy for the
express purpose of having sex, I paused, holding his
erection, thinking "Put your mouth on that and you're a
cocksucker!" And then I was.
-- Ronald Ramage

Well, I learned a lot.  You'd be surprised.  They're all
individual countries.
-- Ronald Reagan
   after a tour of South America

As they said in the film Back to the Future: "where we're
going, we don't need roads."  Today, physicists peering into
the infinitely small realms of subatomic particles find
reaffirmations of religious faith.
-- Ronald Reagan
   State of the Union Address, 4 Feb 1986

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves
been born.
-- Ronald Reagan

Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?
-- Ronald Reagan

Facts are stupid things.
-- Ronald Reagan
   1988 Republican Convention

Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks
differently.
-- Rosa Luxemburg

It's always Beach Party Barbie, or Malibu Barbie....  That
shit does not prepare you for the true horror of a real
woman's life.  Where is Single, Abused, Trailer-Park Barbie?
-- Roseanne Arnold

Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.
-- Roy Adzak
   "Contemporary Artists," 1977

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by
mankind.
-- Rudyard Kipling

Do you call that the true way?  How about a new map?
-- Ruediger Schwarz

Eyes see surface, not reality. 
-- Rumi

Never wait at a barrier. 
-- Rumi

What you give comes back in the same form.  If you plant
barley, don't expect to harvest wheat. 
-- Rumi

How many people speak the same language even when they speak
the same language?
-- Russell Hoban

For years, I suspected that various prohibitions on private
activities would turn us into a nation of criminals.  Now I
realize that it's much worse than that: it has turned us
into a nation of liars.
-- Russell Lawrence

Some days you're the spark that lights the bonfire, some
days the wood's just all wet.
-- Ry Schwark

I thank you for letting me know that I was never and will
never be without a community.  But that dark and as yet
unhealed part of me still cries, "Where were you when I
needed you?"
-- Peter Kim
We were here.  We have always been here.  Since before time
was counted we have been here, walkers between worlds.
Shamans, Perverts, Godesses, Heretics, Healers, and more.
Our ancient eyes watch as they always have, and we stood
next to you with arms outstretched waiting for you to open
your terror-stricken eyes and reach out to us.
-- Ry Schwark

This is soc.motss.  We never leave anything or anyone alone.
It wouldn't be supportive.
-- Ry Schwark

I'd settle for 8 inches!
-- John Dorrance
I'll be damned if I'm cutting off that much for anybody!
-- Ry Schwark

I think being visibly out means different things to
different people, from queeny queers to Way BUTCH and in
your face.
-- Ry Schwark

Just because some guy in an ad asks for straight-acting
doesn't mean he's real closeted (though the implication is
there), but it does rather strongly imply that he's
suffering a severe clue deficiency.
-- Ry Schwark

Outing is not a simple issue.  It is a violent scream of
rage to move beyond private tolerance, as long as strayts
don't see you, to a demand for equality and that being
publicly gay is not something to be ashamed of.
-- Ry Schwark

Welcome out of the closet to life.  It is a war zone, a
furnace, an overgrown secret garden, a thunderstorm, a snowy
morning, a bloody scalpel, and moonlit laughter.  No one
escapes unbloodied, except those who don't play, and they
are the saddest of all, by far.
-- Ry Schwark

When I talk to clueless straight people, and they tell me
"That Gay Bashing is *horrible*, of course, everybody agrees
with that, but don't you think the Homophobia stuff is just
a little bit overblown?  I mean everybody gets called names
sometimes, don't you think the gay community is just a
little bit touchy?"

It is about at this point in the conversation that a huge
rush of testosterone hits the blood stream and I have an
incredible urge to beat them over the head with the 2X4.  I
*hate* straight people who use their perception of the world
to view my world.
-- Ry Schwark

Perfection is when expectations and reality actually meet.
-- Ry Schwark

Happiness is a warm puppy, stir-fried with scallions and red
pepper.
-- Ry Schwark

The problem is that 90% of all people believe that as long
as you can quote numbers, you must really know what you're
talking about.
-- Ry Schwark

You got jumped for being stupid and pedantic.  You have to
have thoughts to get accused of thought crimes, so you're
safe there.
-- Ry Schwark

So you other muffins, come out and play in our dangerous
paradise and win your own scars and laugh your own laughter.
-- Ry Schwark

There is only one difference between a madman and me.  I am
not mad.
-- Salvador Dali

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what
is right.
-- Salvor Hardin
   "Foundation"

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
substance.
-- Sam Brown
   "Washington Post," 1977

Let's pretend for a second, that homosexuality is a
lifestyle choice.  Standing on one's head every night for
thirty minutes is a lifestyle choice.  Does that mean that
people should be discriminated against because they are
head-standers?  "We don't hire head-standers."
-- Sameer Parekh

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from
insufficient premises.
-- Samuel Butler

All animals except man know that the principal business of
life is to enjoy it.
-- Samuel Butler

Read over your compositions, and, when you meet a passage
which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
-- Samuel Johnson

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are
too strong to be broken.
-- Samuel Johnson

Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.
-- Samuel Johnson

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections
must be first overcome.
-- Samuel Johnson

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that
is good is not original, and the part that is original is
not good.
-- Samuel Johnson

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an
advantage to which he is not entitled.
-- Samuel Johnson

If you attack stupidity you attack an entrenched interest
with friends in government and every walk of public life,
and you will make small progress against it.
-- Samuel Marchbanks

I don't like to spread gossip, but what *else* can you do
with it?
-- Sandy Hereld

Just because I find you fascinating doesn't mean I find you
attractive!
-- Sandy Hereld

A king cannot be a king without his messengers attending
him.  And patriarchy cannot persist without female
complicity, regardless of how that complicity is
commandeered, complicity that persists as women and lesbians
back away from our power to invent.  My concern in pursuing
withdrawal or separation, both ethically and politically,
involves pursuing lesbian agency outside the
dominant/subordinate values of heterosexualism.  To
separate, withdraw, refocus, is to cease attending to the
existing system.
-- Sarah Lucia Hoagland
   "Lesbian ethics: Toward New Value" (1988)

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly
planted in the human head if only you begin to inculcate it
before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an
air of great solemnity.
-- Schopenhauer

I am against any so-called "rights" which are really
coercive interference into the right of Freedom Of
Association.
-- Phil Ronzone
Who you invite into your house is your freedom of
association.  Beyond that it is simply a territorial battle.
No one is forcing you to ever leave the house where your
freedom of association ends.
-- Scott Amspoker

Like many folks, I sometimes wonder about the dubious use of
the term "lifestyle" when discussing homosexual men and
women.  I really can't figure out what is meant by it.  At
what point does something become a "lifestyle".  If I watch
"Startrek" each week, am I living a "Startrek lifestyle?"
Does one have to spend a certain number of waking hours
doing something to declare it a lifestyle?  Are we all
living a "Usenet lifestyle?"
-- Scott Amspoker

20/20 has usually been gay positive in the past.  They even
did a piece a couple of years ago about the curable disease
called Homophobia.
-- Scott Amspoker

Bigots love to be bigots.  They'll defend it to someone
else's death.  They know that the intent of their bigotry is
to hurt yet they insist on denying that their bigotry has a
negative influence on others fearing some kind of backlash.
Bigots are, after all, cowards.
-- Scott Amspoker

I'm waiting for a "scientific paper" to conclude that
homosexuality is natural because it has been observed in
humans.
-- Scott Amspoker

You can goddamned well take your sorry fucking ass right out
of here, and right quick, before the troops turn mean.  I
believe it's well past the time when they should have done
so.
-- Jess Anderson
For people here, arrogance, bad manners, and filthy language
almost seem a badge of honor.
-- Walter Smith
If you can't understand how you managed to bring out such
ugliness in other people then that's just one more thing for
you to think about.  Perhaps the next time a gay rights law
is on the ballot you can vote against it to teach everybody
a lesson in manners.
-- Scott Amspoker

Someone once griped at me about these so-called "homosexual
meeting places."  All I could do to respond was explain that
the rest of the surface area of the planet had already been
designated as a "heterosexual meeting place."
-- Scott Amspoker

You can be born to the path of a warrior and never harm
anyone. 
-- Scott Glenn

If the information isn't worth your time to put on an
archive, then it's not worth the rest of us paying to get
it.
-- Scott Hess

A GUI is to a command-line as a TV is to a book.
-- Scott Hess

Tried anarchy, once.  Found it had too many constraints.
-- Scott Hess

I know it's trivial, but its the smaller something is, the
easier it is for it to get under your skin.
-- Scott Ingram

Tabloid conspiracy theories aren't always worth the toilet
paper they're printed on.
-- Scott Keeney

Better blatant than latent. 
-- Scott Safier

All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately
unrehearsed.
-- Sean O'Casey

Doesn't anybody water-ski anymore?
-- Sim Aberson
Knee-boarding is more fun ... you can do more tricks.
-- Season Marie Taylor

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted
to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class
management.
-- Senator Soaper

This constant intervention by government in tasks that
belong to the individual must cease, or ours will become as
bureaucratic a government as that of Russia.
-- Senator Thomas Bayard
   on an animal inspection bill, 28 Apr 1884

It makes a great difference whether a person is unwilling to
sin, or does not know how.
-- Seneca

When I think over what I've said, I envy dumb people.
-- Seneca

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party;
there is no battle unless there be two.
-- Seneca

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
-- Seneca

Mr. Watson, come here, I ...  uh, could you hold a minute,
I have a call on my other line.  Sorry, Mr.  Watson, it was
just one of those darn Friends and Family people again.
-- Seth Johnson

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else
will speak.
-- Shakespeare
   "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be
one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
-- Shakespeare
   "The Merchant of Venice"

Poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men.
-- Shakespeare
   "Julius Caesar"

There's small choice in rotten apples. 
-- Shakespeare

The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger.
-- Shakespeare

O monstrous world!  Take note, take note, O world!/ To be
direct and honest is not safe.
-- Shakespeare
   "Othello"

No, you may not speak freely.  This is America.  We have a
high moral hypocrisy to uphold.
-- Shannon Thomas Pricket

If one truly needs to see an argument as to why finding a
cure for an epidemic is worthwhile, and why it is the
government's responsibility to pioneer this effort, then the
point is lost on them anyway.
-- Shawn Hicks

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
-- Shelley

Bi.  That means *everybody* thinks you're a pervert!
-- Shelley Hines

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the truth.
-- Sherlock Holmes

You cowboys are all faggots!
-- Sid Vicious
   to an audience of Texans

No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot
soldier in a party or movement.  He will always find himself
out of step.
-- Sidney Hook

An unrestricted satisfaction of every need presents itself
as the most enticing method of conducting one's life, but it
means putting enjoyment before caution, and soon brings its
own punishment.
-- Sigmund Freud

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
-- Sigmund Freud

Imaginative writers are valuable colleagues and their
testimony is to be rated very highly because they draw on
sources that we have not yet made accessible to science.
The portrayal of the psychic life of human beings is, of
course, the imaginative writer's most special demand.  He
has always been the forerunner of science and thus
scientific psychology, too.
-- Sigmund Freud

Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the
hands of science two great outrages upon its naive
self-love.  The first was when it realized that our earth was
not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a
world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable...  The
second was when biological research robbed man of his
particular privilege of having been specially created, and
relegated him to a descent from the animal world.
-- Sigmund Freud

[On abuse:] The telling also gives one a sense of freedom
from the abuser, gets the story out in the open.  One can be
who they are without fearing their abusers.  In the same way
that coming out as queers can be a political statement,
"coming out" as survivors can also.  It *usually* gives the
survivor a sense of empowerment.  That still leaves the
quandry of what is "liberating" and what is just "airing
dirty laundry."
-- Sim Aberson

Anger can be destructive or constructive.  So many positive
things can come of our anger.  Do something about it.  Help
organize gay and lesbian youth groups in your area.  Get
involved in the gay struggle (I assume you do not do these
things, but everyone knows what assuming does).  Be angry,
but put that anger to good use.
-- Sim Aberson

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay
bought.
-- Simon Cameron

Freedom to be just like everyone else is no freedom at all.
-- Sister Boom Boom

This rite brings me closer to my mortality; rubs my face in
it.  It brings me closer to all those I know who are dying.
This bloodletting...is this not communion too?
-- Skip Chapen
   on HIV testing

There is only one good -- knowledge; and one evil --
ignorance.
-- Socrates

Let him who would move the world first move himself.
-- Socrates

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that
word is love.
-- Sophocles

Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and
make up reasons for it afterwards.
-- Soren F. Petersen

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived
forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

Rhetorical subtlety doesn't work on people with the
perceptive powers of an eggplant.
-- Spencer Sun

Interrobang?  Sounds like a bunch of captors trying to beat
information out of a captive by forced congress.
-- Spencer Sun

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at
them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
-- Spinoza

Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
-- Spinoza

There is room for all of us -- and our divergent views --
under the First Amendment.
-- Spiro Agnew

Humans do have an amazing capacity for believing what they
choose.
-- Spock

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than
unanswered ones.
-- St. Teresa of Avila

And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate
receptacle.
-- Stan Dunn

Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to
plumbing. 
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle
   "Computer Language," Oct 90

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
-- Stanislaw Lec

Out of nothing, I am forced / To create the universe.
-- Stanley L. Kameny

A man said to the universe, "Sir, I exist." "However,"
replied the universe, "the fact has not created in me a
sense of obligation."
-- Stephan Crane
   "War is Kind," 1899

Indifference is a militant thing.  When it goes away it
leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through
the throat.  It is not a child's pastime like mere highway
robbery.
-- Stephan Crane

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
-- Stephan Crane

It is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that
your brains fall out.
-- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

Debbie Harry, of course, is both the Lulu and the Leslie
Gore of the '70s (or is that '80s?).
-- Stephen Arrants

Liberty wasn't guaranteed by the Constitution.  It was only
given a chance.
-- Stephen Chapman
   Chicago Tribune

'92 was the birth-year of the Hal 9000 computer.  He was
born last month [January] in Urbana, Illinois.
-- Stephen Chappell

In the UK, ancient buildings are knocked down to build
motorways.  In the US, a motorway and theme park are built
around this site of "major historical interest."
-- Stephen Foster

It is practically impossible to hold a dinner party that
involves gay men.  If your guests are gay, they will arrive
either an hour, a day, or a week late, bring completely the
wrong sort of wine to go with your coral napkin rings, or
have sex with your lover whilst you're left doing the
dishes.
-- Stephen Foster

The guests giggled, and floated down to the bottom of the
garden to inspect the herbaceous borders, and snatch a quick
snog before the crudities.
-- Stephen Foster

Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
-- Stephen Hawking

My goal is simple.  It is complete understanding of the
universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
-- Stephen Hawking

"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a
reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to
mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers
understand exactly why it is false.  What could be more
destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity
in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than
a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred
trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only
known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general
understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould
   "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12

But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.
Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of
years so far as we can tell.  If intelligent people invested
intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then
the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in
their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard example of
ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not
discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a
pin could house a finite or an infinite number.
-- Stephen Jay Gould

The watchwords of creativity are sloppiness, poor fit,
quirky design above all else, redundancy.
-- Stephen Jay Gould

The attempt to understand the universe is one of the only
things that elevates the human condition from farce to the
elegance of tragedy.
-- Stephen Weinberg

Madonna is interesting only insofar as she appropriates
earlier images, feeding them to a new generation who
(mistakenly) sees them as her own.
-- Steve Dyer

Madonna has a fair chance of becoming the Debbie Harry of
the 21st century.
-- Steve Dyer

It's time for you to aspire to something higher than getting
in touch with your inner charge card.
-- Steve Dyer

I really have to step in and state the obvious, namely that
*we* (the over-the-hill gang and those rapidly approaching)
are the wave of the future.  [The young ones] will become
old farts like us in a remarkably few years, tender chickens
suddenly turned to tough old hens, destined to lecture to
those too fresh 'n clean to appreciate that they'd been
there before as well.  Just wait for the 25th anniversary of
soc.motss.
-- Steve Dyer

You're like someone ranting and raving about how awful it is
to be tall, and the shit that you get because of it, while
directing your vituperativeness towards short people.  Is it
any wonder that you're being tarred as a looney-tune?
-- Steve Dyer

Oh, no wonder, I look much better when I'm dithered.
-- Steve Dyer

Anyway, if I were dressed in latex, I'd be mistaken for the
Michelin man.
-- Steve Dyer

They [homophobic postings] hold no resonance for me, unlock
no bogeymen, arouse no fears or revulsion, just a weird kind
of pity for the perpetrators.
-- Steve Dyer

I'll tell you one type of person I don't respect: someone
who thinks they know better what I want than I do.
-- Steve Dyer

Try reading for content.  You'll be amazed at the
distinctions you will be able to draw.
-- Steve Dyer

I just heard on NPR that The New Republic now has an openly
gay editor, Andrew Sullivan!  Has anyone heard more about
this?
-- Ron Rizzo
It's only a year or so old.  Wake up and smell the latte.
-- Steve Dyer

I'm not old enough to have a beard.  I'm old enough to
shave, but I lack the testosterone necessary for a full
beard.
-- Nelson Minar
That's what regular, er, injections are for, young fellator.
-- Steve Dyer

The proper response to "Well, have you ever _seen_ any of
Fellini's movies?" is not "Well, have you ever _seen_ any
of River Phoenix's movies?"
-- Steve Dyer

Be careful of the closeness of the signs LUNCH and LESBIAN.
If you sign, "I'm hungry, let's eat lesbians", you should be
sure that's what you meant.
-- Steve Eastman

If common sense was so common then everyone would have it. 
-- Steve Giammarco

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter
to me.  Going to bed at night saying we've done something
wonderful ... that's what matters to me.
-- Steve Jobs


I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country
what it once was...  an arctic wilderness.
-- Steve Martin

So now AIDS is not only "God's punishment of homosexuals"
but "God's punishment of homosexuals and anybody that screws
around." Additionally, God's apparent sloppiness leads to
all those infected through blood transfusions, medical
accidents and all the other horrors AIDS has inflicted.
Pathetic.  It must be embarrassing for intelligent Christians
to put up with this slander of their god -- you know, that a
purported compassionate, loving being could possibly be such
a cruel asshole.  Do you really think you're gonna recruit
anybody by scaring people with this wacko version of the Big
Enchilada?  Methinks no.
-- Steve Novak

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is
the mind of the oppressed. 
-- Steven Biko

We also learned a new term for people who are in the closet:
Tomato.  Because only an expert can tell it's a fruit.
-- Steven Schwartz

When I was a baby I kept a diary.  Recently I was reading
it.  It said: (1)Still tired from the move.  (2)Everybody
keeps talking to me like I'm an idiot.
-- Steven Wright

I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of
Houdini locking his keys in his car; the other is a rare
photograph of Norman Rockwell beating up a child.
-- Steven Wright

A lot of people are afraid of heights.  Not me, I'm afraid
of widths.
-- Steven Wright

I spilled spot remover on my dog.  Now he's gone.
-- Steven Wright

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
-- Steven Wright

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
-- Steven Wright

You can't have everything.  Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright

My school colors were clear. 
-- Steven Wright

If you didn't know me, would you think I was a stranger?
-- Steven Wright

I like to put a little time aside...  and forget about it
for later.
-- Steven Wright

You know how you stick a stick in water and it looks bent?
That's why I don't take baths.
-- Steven Wright

No matter what temperature the room is, it's always room
temperature. 
-- Steven Wright

How much deeper do you think the oceans would be ...  if
sponges didn't grow in them?
-- Steven Wright

Hermits have no peer pressure. 
-- Steven Wright

Whenever I think about the past ... it brings back so
many memories. 
-- Steven Wright

What's another word for thesaurus? 
-- Steven Wright

I picked up a hitchhiker the other day.  After we drove a
little while, I turned to him and asked "So how far did you
think you were going?"
-- Steven Wright

I am a peripheral visionary. 
-- Steven Wright

Life may seem unfair, but Life never cheats the way people
do.
-- Stewart Kramer

Never use a big word when a more diminutive one will
suffice.
-- Stewart Kramer

I'd like to eliminate "discrimination" and "intolerance"
from the world, without having to kill anyone to do it.
-- Stewart Kramer

I oppose shaving on the purely rational basis of it being
how God made us.  The body is a temple; who do you think you
are to go mowing its lawn?
-- Stewart Kramer

I'll believe Avon treated men and women equally the day I
see him kiss a man, tell him he's beautiful when he's angry,
kill him and then gloat over it.
-- Sue Clerc

Mastery in warfare consists of winning without fighting.
-- Sun Tzu

Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have
greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than
the men of 1776.
-- Susan B. Anthony

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do
with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz

What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical
feminism.  It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism
designed to sell books and magazines, three-piece suits,
airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most important,
corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes, women were
discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain
wealth, prestige and power by dint of individual rather than
collective effort."
-- Susan Gordon

Don't talk to me about the public not being able to stomach
the abnormal, man -- most people get too used to lying to
themselves about anything uncomfortable at so early an age
that they themselves are not a reliable source.
-- Susan Juroff

Our reception was held at a hall and catered with china and
a two-tier cake.  The caterer was happy to do this event.
He had a small problem with trying to understand that not
all lesbians are vegetarians.  But once he got over that,
everything went fine.
-- Susan Salek

Sanity is a cozy lie. 
-- Susan Sontag

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
-- Susan Sontag

Why my thoughts are my own, when they are in, but when they
are out they are another's.
-- Susanna Martin
   executed for witchcraft, 1681

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
-- Sydney J. Harris

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's
mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.
-- Sydney J. Harris

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to
puff and blow, "is to learn something.  That's the only
thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in
your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the
disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may
see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know
your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is
only one thing for it then -- to learn.  Learn why the world
wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the
mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured
by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
Learning is the only thing for you.  Look what a lot of
things there are to learn.
-- T.H. White
   "The Once and Future King"

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-- T.S. Eliot

Friendship should be more than biting Time can sever.
-- T.S. Eliot

The desire for security stands against every great and noble
enterprise.
-- Tacitus

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.  (They have made a
wilderness and called it peace.)
-- Tacitus

If a machine can be made so that an idiot can use it, then
only an idiot will use it.
-- Tadao Ichikawa

If we achieve satori and the satori shows, like a bit of
dogshit stuck on the tip of our nose, that is not so good.
-- Taisen Deshimaru

There's less here than meets the eye.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

My dear, when it comes to suicide, actions speak louder than
words.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

My heart is pure as the driven slush.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it.
If I had my life to live again, I'd make the same mistakes,
only sooner.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

Nobody can be exactly like me.  Even I have trouble doing
it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

I take Him shopping with me.  I say, "OK, Jesus, help me
find a bargain."
-- Tammy Faye Bakker

We have learned again and again that equality is a
continuing struggle, and that America is a continuing
revolution.  This means many things, but it surely means that
cabinet posts must be filled on the basis of talent, not
sexual orientation.  And young Americans should not have to
deny who they are, in order to fight and die for their
country.
-- Ted Kennedy
   Democratic National Convention, 1992

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their
intentions.
-- Ted Koppel

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff
that nature replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that
goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going.
-- Tennessee Williams

The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
-- Tennessee Williams

Art must recreate, in full consciousness, and by means of
signs, the total life of the universe, that is to say, the
soul where the varied dream we call the universe is played.
-- Teodor de Wyzewa

Not long ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about
militancy.  Since I've been labeled as "militant" from time
to time, I thought long and hard about what it meant.
Here's what I found.

In a society that says to you at every turn "You are
nothing," it is militant to say "No.  I am something."  This
is the foundation of resistance; perhaps resistance in its
simplest form, and is the beginning of affirming your life.
I will be thinking of this, as I walk down Peachtree on
Sunday, surrounded by 50,000+ of my sisters and brothers:
that simply standing in the sun and being who I am is my act
of resistance, and my act of joy.
-- Terrance Heath

[On interacial dating:] If you're happy, then let the
rest of the world go merrily to Hell ...  there ain't no
guarantee you can get the same thing in another color.
-- Terrance Heath

Old friends pass away, new friends appear.  It is just like
the days.  An old day passes, a new day arrives.  The
important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful
friend -- or a meaningful day.
-- The Dalai Lama
   "Time," 11 April 1988

If you can, help others.  If you can't, at least don't
hurt others. 
-- The Dalai Lama

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious
triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take
rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor
suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that
knows not victory or defeat.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by
spectacular error.
-- Theresa Swayne

Why do writers write?  Because it isn't there.
-- Thomas Berger

In the long-run, every Government is the exact symbol of its
People, with their wisdom and unwisdom.
-- Thomas Carlyle

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual
ignorance.
-- Thomas Carlyle

Minds are like parachutes; they only function when open.
-- Thomas Dewar

There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid
the real labor of thinking.
-- Thomas Edison

All Bibles are man-made. 
-- Thomas Edison

He that will not sail until all dangers are over, will never
put to sea.
-- Thomas Fuller

Today is yesterday's pupil. 
-- Thomas Fuller

With foxes we must play the fox. 
-- Thomas Fuller

The great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful
theory by an ugly fact. 
-- Thomas Henry Huxley

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.
-- Thomas Hobbes

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile
to Liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what
books may be sold and what we may buy?  ...  Whose foot is
to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or
stretched?
-- Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty
gods or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my
leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming
feature.
-- Thomas Jefferson

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be
always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the whole
American people which declared that their legislature should
'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall
of separation between church and state.
-- Thomas Jefferson
   to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist  Association in 1802

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions
of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition
(Christianity) one redeeming feature.  They are all alike
founded on fables and mythology.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press, and that
cannot be limited without being lost.
-- Thomas Jefferson

It's not that simple, no matter how you wish it so.  You
made public statements from a position of false authority;
now you're having them shoved down your throat.  Welcome to
netnews.
-- Thomas Maddox

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian
churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing;
it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it
has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no
conclusion.
-- Thomas Paine

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous
debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the
bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we
called it the word of a demon than the Word of God.  It is a
history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and
brutalize mankind.
-- Thomas Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even
his enemy from oppression.
-- Thomas Paine

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish
church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the
Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church
that I know of.  My own mind is my own church.
-- Thomas Paine

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in
religion is the worst.
-- Thomas Paine

There was no difference between the behavior of a god and
the operations of pure chance.
-- Thomas Pynchon
   "Gravity's Rainbow"

A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute
for knowing what the hell you're talking about.
-- Thomas Sowell

Missionaries: Making the world safe for hypocrisy.
-- Thomas Wolfe

What's wrong with the world then, is that it doesn't ask --
and make it possible -- for people to raise and contribute
the best that is in them.
-- Tillie Olsen

The difference between tattooed people and non-tattooed
people: tattooed people don't care if you're not tattooed.
-- Tim Byars

The notion of ideas as infectious diseases is one to which
most authoritarian religions and governments subscribe, and
they hold massive "hygienic" burnings of the "viral DNA"
behind the ideas.  Promulgators of these "diseased" ideas
are called "carriers of spiritual impurity" (to use one
phrase now popular in China) and attempts are made to
prevent the spread of these diseases.  This is a naive and
dangerous view of how ideas work, and it is disturbing to
see it rationalized into Western pop psychology.
-- Tim Maroney

Listen up, muthafuckas.  One time and one time only.  Again.
THREE e's - like 3 dots in an ellipsis or 3 e's in Deee-Lite
Or 3 kings of Orient are or 3 leaves and a berry or 3 blind
muthafuckin' mice.  None of this 2 e crap.
-- John Dorrance
Sorry, Miss Theeeng.
-- Tim Pierce

And while I agree with Quayle's attack on the "Cultural
Elite" I doubt it was his original conception.  I am *not*
in the 11%.
-- Matthew Melmon
Or even in the 10%, judging from your remarks.
-- Tim Pierce

Sounds like you're only concerned about de facto special
rights when they are owned by people other than yourself.
The existing system says, "Well, let's take Joe instead of
John; we don't want any faggots in this company," which
constitutes a de facto special right for heterosexuals.
-- Tim Pierce

It may be morally repugnant to discriminate against someone
on the basis of skin color, but perfectly justifiable to
discriminate on the basis of moral character.
-- Darrell Hougen
So judge on the basis of moral character, not on the basis
of sexual orientation.
-- Tim Pierce

I have enough of a brain left that I can attribute these
actions [fag-bashing] to a very small and certainly not
representative slice of the population of Mexican Americans.
-- Roger Leuthner
Well then, I must not have a brain left anymore.  The
beatings from young white heterosexual men in New York, in
Houston, in Miami, in Chicago, in Boston, in Lincoln, in
Raleigh, and many other places must have driven from my head
the subtle distinctions between one group of young white
heterosexual men and another.
-- Tim Pierce

The bottom line, I think, is this: people who seem to be
highly ignorant of queer culture, queer politics, queer
history, or other things queer are not regarded highly
around here.
-- Tim Pierce
Let's say: People who seem to be highly ignorant of the
"politically correct or official line about" queer culture,
etc, etc.
-- Alberto Pinkas
Well, this ought to be interesting.  What, according to you,
is the "politically incorrect line about queer culture?" I'm
really devastatingly interested in a heterosexual's opinion
of this, you know.
-- Tim Pierce

I have little doubt that the men's movement, in its current
state, is anything more than Venus envy.
-- Tim Pierce

Just had to ask, is fighting violence *with* violence the
answer?
-- Penn Collins
I don't care if it's the Answer.  It's better than fighting
violence with nothing.
-- Tim Pierce

Thank you ever so much for clarifying that.  Run along now
and play with your toys.
-- Tim Pierce

I know some people who think that being Gay is a
psychological disorder, in some cases.  They do not believe
that Gay should be given minority status.
-- Alberto Pinkas
Some people think they're Napoleon, but it doesn't make them
short.
-- Tim Pierce

I used to have a sexuality, but now I just have sex.
-- Tim Russell

I could never give up who I have become.  I have grown wings
since September, and it only gets better from here...
-- Timothy Keeling

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.  That
myth is more potent than history.  I believe that dreams are
more powerful than facts.  That hope always triumphs over
experience.  That laughter is the only cure for grief, And I
believe that love is stronger than death.
-- Todd W. Thompson

94% of Americans surveyed believed that polls are the best
mechanism for making public policy decisions.  Of those
responding, 86% were avid readers of USA Today, and 62%
spelled potato with an 'e' at the end.
-- Tom Chatt

The whole project [the sociologist Tennov's theory of
"limerence"] depends on the belief that vector mathematics
is meaningfully analogous to human emotions.  Sorry.  I just
don't buy it.
-- Tom Chatt

It is appropriate for the *homophobe*, rather than the
homosexual, to be apologizing for his/her existence.
-- Tom Chatt

If Space and Time are curved, where do all the straight
people come from?
-- Tom Chatt

Could I have optimized [this script] for legibility?  Yes,
but then I would have had to use more slides.
-- Tom Christiansen

A benighted adolescent in my neighborhood yelled "homo" at
me this morning, and I, remembering the etymology of
"homosexual," thought: how ironic it is that this boy is
trying to reassure himself that I am something he would
never be by in effect shouting "same" at me.
-- Tom Flesher

I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never
said I'd listen to it!
-- Tom Galloway
   with apologies to Voltaire

I spent most of my childhood being terrified by the question
'Am I normal?'.  I'm relieved now that I now know for sure
that I am not.
-- Tom Limoncelli

Long as you're not afraid, nobody can run your life for you.
Remember that.  Hell is being scared of things.  Heaven is
refusing to be scared.
-- Tom Robbins

Eternity is a terrible thought.  I mean, where's it going to
end?
-- Tom Stoppard

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental
patients.
-- Tom Szasz

The oppressed speak a million tongues. 
-- Tom Szasz

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
-- Tom Szasz

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and
forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
-- Tom Szasz

It shall be an offense to attack, damage, deface, burn,
kick or step on an American flag except one that a
politician has wrapped himself in.
-- Tom Toles

The more things change, the more they stay insane.
-- Tom Weller

There are more things in heaven and earth than anyplace
else. 
-- Tom Weller

It's a bit hard to say goodbye to what has been, even when
what is to be is far better.  A year ago, I was comfortable.
I did not have to worry about my parents calling me for
another shouting match about my sexuality.  I didn't have to
contend with explaining the birds and the bees to another
relative every time I turned around.  A year ago, life was
easier.  But today, I like who I am.
-- Trey Harris

The Tories -- I still prefer the name as being without
definite meaning; the direct falsehood implied in the title
of Conservative amounts almost to a libel.
-- Trollope
   "The Bertrams"

The good thing about masturbation is that you don't have to
dress up for it.
-- Truman Capote

A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat
without having his neighbor notice it.
-- Trygve Lie

When someone every day has to write as much as his space
allows, and it has to appear readable to an audience of
diverse tastes, social class, education, throughout a
country, the writer's freedom is already finished: The
contents of the message will not depend on the author but on
the technological and sociological characteristics of the
medium.
-- Umberto Eco
   "Towards a Semiological Guerilla Warfare"

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, or to pull out your
submachinegun and blow them away -- that is the question.
-- Uncle Albert Stolwyczinki

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of
the mystery of human life.
-- (Unknown)

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
-- (Unknown)

And you thought people went to college to learn, not just to
reinforce their opinions.
-- (Unknown)

Remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.
-- (Unknown)

At first there was nothing.  Then god said "Let there be
light!" Then there was still nothing.  But you could see it.
-- (Unknown)

Sushido: the Way of the Tuna.
-- (Unknown)

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least
one honest man a century.
-- (Unknown)

He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead.
-- (Unknown)

I qualify almost everything I say.
-- (Unknown)

Support the atheist church, a non-prophet organization.
-- (Unknown)

Q: What are two things we commonly teach our children that
are wrong?  A: That a knowledge of science is nice but not
necessary and that a knowledge of sex is necessary but not
nice.
-- (Unknown)

Just remember: Bitnet doesn't have a mail system; it has a
virtual card deck transport.
-- (Unknown)

A conservative is a liberal who was mugged.  And a liberal
is a conservative who has been arrested.
-- (Unknown)

If IBM were responsible for evolution, the dinosaurs would
still roam the earth.
-- (Unknown)

Erotic is using a feather; kinky is using the whole chicken.
-- (Unknown)

Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
-- (Unknown)

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such
a way that you will look forward to the trip.
-- (Unknown)

Although I may disagree with what you say, I will defend to
the death your right to hear me tell you how wrong you are.
-- (Unknown)

Any component, when inadvertently dropped, will roll into a
hiding place, the inaccessibility of which is proportional
to the square of the component's irreplaceability.
-- (Unknown)

If you think that mental illness interferes with financial
success, just look at the average television evangelist.
-- (Unknown)

PSYCHO-HACKER 
adapted from the Talking Head's PSYCHO-KILLER
by Glenn Kramer

I can't seem to face up to these hacks.
I'm tense and nervous, can't relax.
I can't sleep, it won't compile.
Looks like I'll be here for a while.

     Psycho-hacker, control-shift-A
     Type type type type, type type type type type type, 
     It's gonna run run, run run run run run all day,
     Oh oh oh oooooh, eye yaiiiyaiiiyaiii!

You start a function call, you can't even finish it.
You write a lot, but it doesn't compile.
When I've got nothing to write, I turn to text.
Write a function once, why write it again?

     Psycho-hacker, control-shift-A
     Type type type type, type type type type type type, 
     It's gonna run run, run run run run run all day,
     Oh oh oh oooooh, eye yaiiiyaiiiyaiii!

C'est que j'ai fais, ce soir la,
A la machine, ce soir la.
Realisant mon espoir,
Je me lance, vers la gloire... OK.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

We are vain, machines are vile!
I hate programs when they don't compile...

     Psycho-hacker, control-shift-A
     Type type type type, type type type type type type, 
     It's gonna run run, run run run run run all day,
     Oh oh oh oooooh, eye yaiiiyaiiiyaiii!

-- (Unknown)

From the Times Literary Supplement, approx.  1969, in a
column by Pendennis: A reader has written to say, apropos of
our item last week about the packaging of condoms in Japan
having become an art form, that the following is scrawled on
a vending machine in Hastings: "This is the worst chewing
gum I've ever tasted."
-- (Unknown)

Born diplomat: someone who remembers your birthdays, but
forgets how many you've had.
-- (Unknown)

The chance of a lifetime is to be yourself.
-- (Unknown)

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius
has its limits.
-- (Unknown)

Don't dream it; be it.
-- (Unknown)

Don't think about why you are doing what you are doing.  You
may stop doing it!
-- (Unknown)

Earth is our mother and our nine months are up.
-- (Unknown)

An egg has the shortest sex-life of all: if gets laid once;
it gets eaten once.  It also has to come in a box with 11
others, and the only person who will sit on its face is its
mother.
-- (Unknown)

Entropy isn't what it used to be.
-- (Unknown)

Everything worthwhile must be won again each day.
-- (Unknown)

The future exists first in the imagination, then in the
will, then in reality.
-- (Unknown)

Galois: the man who met his annihilator in a dual space.
-- (Unknown)

Good health is just the slowest way to die.
-- (Unknown)

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you
cannot do.
-- (Unknown)

Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't
permanent.
-- (Unknown)

I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.
-- (Unknown)

I don't believe in astrology, but then I'm an Aquarius, and
Aquarians don't believe in astrology.
-- (Unknown)

If the mind were exercised as much as the mouth, we would be
a race of geniuses.
-- (Unknown)

If you can't see what's in front of your eyes, use what's
behind them.
-- (Unknown)

If you want to know next year's styles in women's clothes,
look at this year's prostitutes.
-- (Unknown)

In a car, you remember incidents.  On foot, you are part of
them.  A car is driving through; walking is being there.
That is the difference between sex and love.
-- (Unknown)

It is always easy to see both sides of an issue we are not
particularly concerned about.
-- (Unknown)

It must be rough to have to go home every night and scrub
all those eyetracks off your body.
-- (Unknown)

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
-- (Unknown)

Klein bottle for sale: inquire within.
-- (Unknown)

Love is missing someone even when they're with you.
-- (Unknown)

The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of
someone he can blame it on.
-- (Unknown)

Monsters come in many forms.  And ...  the greatest monster
of them all [is] Guilt.
-- (Unknown)

The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the
probability of its success.
-- (Unknown)

Never make anything simple and efficient when it can be
complex and wonderful.
-- (Unknown)

Never return early, because goodbye is a promise that you
won't.
-- (Unknown)

Never wait until tomorrow to tell someone that you love
them.  Sometimes, tomorrow never comes.
-- (Unknown)

No torture is as cruel or heinous as an imaginative person's
fantasy.
-- (Unknown)

Nothing is impossible for anyone impervious to reason.
-- (Unknown)

Nothing is quite as cold as a heart unused to love.
-- (Unknown)

Powers of observation lie with the mind, not the eyes.
-- (Unknown)

The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard.
-- (Unknown)

A real friend isn't someone you use once and throw away.  A
real friend is someone you can use again and again.
-- (Unknown)

Silly is a state of Mind; stupid is a way of Life.
-- (Unknown)

The simple beauty of seppuku is the fact that a man may
decide for himself when he can no longer live with shame.
-- (Unknown)

Size matters not.  Look at me.  Some people look for anxiety
the way pigs look for truffles.
-- (Unknown)

Unadorned spaghetti tastes pretty much the same all over.
It's the sauce that makes the difference.
-- (Unknown)

The way some people find fault, you'd think there was a
reward.
-- (Unknown)

The way to a man's heart is with a broadsword.
-- (Unknown)

When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is
the impression you will make.
-- (Unknown)

A man asked God how much a million dollars was to Him.
"About a penny." The man asked how long a million years was
to Him.  "About a second." The man asked if God could give
him a penny.  "Yeah...just a second..."
-- (Unknown)

The voice of my grandmother said to me, the earth is our
mother.  What befalls the earth befalls all the sons and
daughters of the earth.
-- (Unknown)

#1: This is also the United States of America.
#2: This comes as a great shock to those of us in what
we thought were other countries.
-- (Unknown)

Peace is not the absence of war.  Peace is the presence of a
system for resolving conflicts before war becomes necessary.
War never creates peace.
-- (Unknown)

Looking for something in "Computer Shopper" is like trying
to drink from a fire hose.
-- (Unknown)

Certe, Toto, sentio nos in Kansate non iam adesse.
-- (Unknown)

Born-agains tend to be more intolerant than the Christians
who weren't born again but grew up in the first place.
-- (Unknown)

If the brain were so simple that we could understand it,
we would be so simple that we couldn't.
-- (Unknown)

Whose rational logic shall we use -- yours or mine?
-- (Unknown)

I will not live by your rules -- I'm more man than you'll
ever be and more woman than you'll ever get.
-- (Unknown)

Reality is what bumps into you when you stand very still
with your eyes open.
-- (Unknown)

A friend is someone who likes you in spite of yourself.
-- (Unknown)

Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and
eggs.  The chicken was involved; the pig was committed.
-- (Unknown)

It's just as wonderful that thorns have roses as it is
terrible that roses have thorns.
-- (Unknown)

The biggest barrier to communication is the assumption that
it's taking place.
-- (Unknown)

The only problem with groups that have all the answers is
that they don't allow any questions.
-- (Unknown)

Maybe you just missed a unicorn.  Maybe unicorns can affect
our lives.  You can't know until you've either met one, or
proved that one doesn't exist.
-- (Unknown)

Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
-- (Unknown)

Life, my dear, is a matter of breathing -- nothing else!!!
-- (Unknown)

If it draws blood, it's hardware.
-- (Unknown)

Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible
but nothing of interest is easy.
-- (Unknown)

Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce
his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably
mangle it into (Nick-les Worth).  Which is to say that
Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value.
-- (Unknown)

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a
black cat which isn't there..  A theologian is the one who
finds it.
-- (Unknown)

But if a man carries his own light with him, he need not be
afraid of any darkness.
-- (Unknown)

When you're up to your butt in alligators, it's difficult to
remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.
-- (Unknown)

The secret of happiness is not getting what you want, it's
wanting what you get.
-- (Unknown)

I never met a fortune teller who could predict that I was
about to arrest him/her for working without a license.
-- (New York City police officer)
Well, of course he wouldn't meet them!
-- (Unknown)

I am new to the nets, so bare with me if I make any dumb
mistakes.
-- (Unknown)

What if there were no hypothetical situations?
-- (Unknown)

There are two rules for success in life: Rule 1: Don't tell
people everything you know.
-- (Unknown)

Being omnipotent means never having to say "I don't know."
-- (Unknown)

There's one big difference between genius and stupidity.
Genius has limits.
-- (Unknown)

My face is leaving in 15 minutes.  Be on it.
-- (Unknown)

A person is just about as big as the things that make them
angry.
-- (Unknown)

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.
-- (Unknown)

Real charity doesn't care if its tax-deductible or not.
-- (Unknown)

"Wait'll next year!" is the favorite cry of baseball fans,
football fans, hockey fans, and gardeners.
-- (Unknown)

They have rights who dare to defend them.
-- (Unknown)

Try to keep things in perspective.  Fifty years from now,
kids in history classes will be yawning over what panics us
today.
-- (Unknown)

Sixteen is absolutely the worst age because what you want
and what you cannot have are exactly the same thing.
-- (Unknown)

Most of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by
criticism.
-- (Unknown)

Love will find a way.  Indifference will find an excuse.
-- (Unknown)

The shortest distance between two points is under
construction.
-- (Unknown)

The probability of someone watching you is proportional to
the stupidity of your action.
-- (Unknown)

There are two types of dirt: The dark kind, attracted to
light objects; and the light kind, attracted to dark
objects.
-- (Unknown)

Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled
from where you started.
-- (Unknown)

Pros are people who do jobs well even when they don't feel
like it.
-- (Unknown)

An authority is a person who can tell you more about
something than you really care to know.
-- (Unknown)

Patience is something you admire greatly in the driver
behind you but not in the one ahead of you.
-- (Unknown)

When growth stops, decay begins.
-- (Unknown)

It's always easy to see both sides of an issue we're not
particularly concerned about.
-- (Unknown)

Why can't life's problems come when we're twenty and know
everything?
-- (Unknown)

In a democracy, agreement is not essential, participation
is.
-- (Unknown)

Happiness is a form of courage.
-- (Unknown)

One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in
debt to those who are kind.
-- (Unknown)

A smile is a curve that sets a lot of things straight.
-- (Unknown)

An effort a day keeps failure away.
-- (Unknown)

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- (Unknown)

Following the crowd can lead you nowhere.
-- (Unknown)

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
-- (Unknown)

All in favor of saving gas, raise your foot.
-- (Unknown)

Junk is something you keep for years, then throw away two
weeks before you need it.
-- (Unknown)

When you save for a long time to buy something, then find
you can't afford it -- that's inflation.
-- (Unknown)

History is not what happened, but what was written down.
-- (Unknown)

Nothing pleases everybody: The fatted calf wasn't happy to
see the prodigal son return.
-- (Unknown)

We all must become more proficient in the art of
thaumaturgy, better known as the performance of miracles.
-- (Unknown)

It's this society we live in which places so little value on
civilized behavior that produces people with so little
self-esteem that they feel they should be grateful to
someone for being a civilized human being.
-- (Unknown)

People often find it easier to be a result of the past than
a cause of the future.
-- (Unknown)

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due.
-- (Unknown)

How can you know where I come from if you don't know where I
have been.
-- (Unknown)

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it
badly.
-- (Unknown)

Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
-- (Unknown)

Children seldom misquote you.  In fact, they usually repeat
word for word what you shouldn't have said.
-- (Unknown)

Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can
find a rock.
-- (Unknown)

Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the
scenic route!
-- (Unknown)

Justifying the death of another person, no matter the
reason, begins the loss of your own humanity -- and your
surrender to it.
-- (Unknown)

Have you seen the latest Japanese camera?  Apparently it is
so fast it can photograph an American with his mouth shut!
-- (Unknown)

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he
loves the flag.
-- (Unknown)

Meditation is not what you think.
-- (Unknown)

No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with
detail.
-- (Unknown)

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
-- (Unknown)

Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.
-- (Unknown)

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
-- (Unknown)

Success is a journey, not a destination.
-- (Unknown)

Tact is the unsaid part of what you're thinking.
-- (Unknown)

Duty is what one expects from others.
-- (Unknown)

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
-- (Unknown)

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes
instead of old ones.
-- (Unknown)

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
-- (Unknown)

Horse sense is the thing a horse has that keeps it from
betting on people.
-- (Unknown)

If you want peace, work for justice. 
-- (Unknown)

Experts are people who learn more and more about less and
less, until eventually they either know everything about
nothing or nothing about everything.
-- (Unknown)

Statistics: A system for expressing your political
prejudices in convincing scientific guise.
-- (Unknown)

The difference between a rabbit and a rock is the
information content, and the difference between a living and
a dead rabbit is in the availability or usability of the
information.
-- (Unknown)

Wayne Newton is an example of what America can be.
-- (Unknown)

A bureaucrat is a politician with tenure.
-- (Unknown)

A closed mouth gathers no foot.
-- (Unknown)

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an
unconvincing possibility.
-- (Unknown)

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
-- (Unknown)

A thing is not necessarily true because people die for it.
-- (Unknown)

Always remember that you are unique.  Just like everyone
else.
-- (Unknown)

Any system that depends on reliability is unreliable.
-- (Unknown)

Be braver.  You cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps.
-- (Unknown)

Beware of people who know the answer before they understand
the question.
-- (Unknown)

By the yard, life is hard.  By the inch, it's a cinch.
-- (Unknown)

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
-- (Unknown)

Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap.
-- (Unknown)

Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the
situation.
-- (Unknown)

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the
school of genius.
-- (Unknown)

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.
-- (Unknown)

Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and
knowing why.
-- (Unknown)

Draw from your fine command of language and say nothing.
-- (Unknown)

If you try to please everyone, somebody is not going to like
it.
-- (Unknown)

It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing
about the problem.
-- (Unknown)

The eyes believe themselves, the ears believe other people.
-- (Unknown)

I paint what I eat. -- Chardin
I eat what I paint. -- Courbet
I eat paint. -- Van Gogh
I paint my food. -- Rauschenberg
-- (Unknown)

Heretic: someone who disagrees with you about something
neither of you knows anything about.
-- (Unknown)

If God had meant for us to go naked, we would have been born
that way.
-- (Unknown)

There's a lot to be said for verbosity!
-- (Unknown)

Will Rogers is the only person in America to have an airport
named after them following their death in a airplane crash.
-- (Unknown)

If a train station is where the train stops, what's a work
station?
-- (Unknown)

Destinesia: The act of entering a room and forgetting why.
-- (Unknown)

Drill in bed, not offshore!
-- (Unknown)

Hi home, I'm honey!
-- (Unknown)

10 years of Reagan/Bush have brought us to a new place:
Post-Constitutional America.
-- (Unknown)

Warning: Taking drugs approved by the FDA can be hazardous
to your health.
-- (Unknown)

Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
-- (Unknown)

If victims can articulate their situations, they cease to be
victims and become a threat.
-- (Unknown)

Like most endeavors, life is seriously over-advertised and
under-funded.
-- (Unknown)

Evolution is like surfing: it's great if you are shooting
the curl but a bit depressing if you are left in the trough.
-- (Unknown)

Up against the stick, motherwalkers, this is a fuck-up!
-- (Unknown)

At any time, at any place, our snipers can drop you.  Have a
nice day.
-- (Unknown)

Garbage In, Gospel Out
-- (Unknown)

God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
-- (Unknown)

Malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to Man.
-- (Unknown)

Many alligators will be slain, but the swamp will remain.
-- (Unknown)

Q.  What do you call three lawyers up to their necks in
quicksand?  A.  Not enough quicksand.
-- (Unknown)

Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your
distant cousin, Man.
-- (Unknown)

The game of life is a game of boomerangs.  Our thoughts,
deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding
accuracy.
-- (Unknown)

The meek are contesting the will.
-- (Unknown)

There are very few problems which can't be solved by ripping
a hole in reality.
-- (Unknown)

There is a difference between "celibate" and simply "not
getting any".  It's like the difference between "fast" and
"starve".
-- (Unknown)

There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always
goes with it.
-- (Unknown)

They don't make nostalgia like they used to.
-- (Unknown)

To err is human, to moo bovine.
-- (Unknown)

What you see is rarely what you get.
-- (Unknown)

What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used
car salesman?  A used car salesman knows when he's lying.
-- (Unknown)

Why won't sharks eat lawyers?   Professional courtesy.
-- (Unknown)

Words must be weighed, not counted.
-- (Unknown)

You can't tell which way the train is going by looking at
the tracks.
-- (Unknown)

Grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
-- (Unknown)

Proof by example: The author gives only the case n = 2 and
suggests that it contains most of the ideas of the general
proof.
-- (Unknown)

Proof by intimidation: 'Trivial'.
-- (Unknown)

Proof by accumulated evidence: Long and diligent search has
not revealed a counterexample.
-- (Unknown)

Proof by cosmology: The negation of the proposition is
unimaginable or meaningless.  Popular for proofs of the
existence of God.
-- (Unknown)

If there's ever anything I can do for you -- or, more to
the point, to you, don't hesitate to ask.
  *What?*
Which word didn't you understand?
-- (Unknown)

If a schlemazl sold umbrellas, it would stop raining; if he
sold candles, the sun would never set; and if he made
coffins, people would stop dying.
-- (Unknown)

These lovers of esoterica seem to derive a great deal of
intellectual satisfaction out of not quite understanding
what they are doing.
-- (Unknown)

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.
-- (Unknown)

The voters have spoken, the bastards... 
-- (Unknown)

There are some people who take a nickel's worth of knowledge
and sit on it as if it were an Incan treasure.
-- (Unknown)

This year, instead of showing your kids where the Bill of
Rights was written, show them why.
-- (Unknown)

Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish
motion.
-- (Unknown)

The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
-- (Unknown)

It is of the nature of ideas to be communicated: written,
spoken, done.  The idea is like grass, it craves light,
likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for
being stepped on.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
   "The Dispossessed"

You can't crush ideas by suppressing them.  You can only
crush them by ignoring them.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
   "The Dispossessed"

To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
   "A Wizard of Earthsea," 1975

I can take some inaccuracy, or some accusation; but the
combination is poison.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

Nobody who says, "I told you so" has ever been, or will ever
be, a hero.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes
depressing, if not carcinogenic.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

The source codes and formal descriptions [for DES] were
publicly available in USSR long before that posting.  I've
first seen it being a student and hacking some Unix sources
about 1982.  Isn't it stupid to continue insisting on export
restrictions of the well-known technology?
-- Vadim Antonov

When an idea is too weak to stand the test of simple
expression, it should be dropped.
-- Vauvenargues

Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.  [Some day it will be
pleasant to remember these things.]
-- Vergil
   "Aeneid"

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the
fraternity of strangers.
-- Victor Hugo

I can't quite see those Mormons using handcuffs or leather
to restrain their natural masturbatory urges.  Instead, I
imagine that there's a whole new market for...  Mormon
Velcro!
-- Vincent Manis

I used to watch Jerry Falwell religiously [sic] each Sunday
morning.  Some of us just enjoy looking at dog poop, I guess.
-- Vincent Manis

As a democratic socialist, I take offense at being lumped in
with Stalinists, Maoists, and the Shining Path.  These
people all espouse something with the name "socialism," but
it's about as close to the real thing as Coors is to beer.
-- Vincent Manis

Lumping democratic socialists in with thugs like Stalinists
and Maoists is like lumping the Quakers in with Jimmy
Swaggart.
-- Vincent Manis

If all the energy which goes into finding out-of-context
biblical quotations were diverted into something worthwhile,
we could end world hunger in a week.
-- Vincent Manis

Heterosexuals of this repressed sort (I specifically exclude
enlightened heterosexuals) generally have such tight asses
that absolutely nothing can get in or out; that is why we
normally say that they are full of shit.
-- Vincent Manis

You know you're past the first flush of youth when you love
retelling old stories, because at least you know how they're
going to turn out.
-- Vincent Manis

I don't believe in single-issue politics; but gay rights is
not an issue by itself.  It speaks to the way in which
governments treat their citizens, or allow them to treat
each other.  A government which supports gay rights is
intrinsically more committed to fairness and decency than
one which does not.
-- Vincent Manis

Vincent Price has made a mint acting in horror movies.  "The
end," he says, "justifies the meanness."
-- Vincent Price

It is difficult to imagine that the belief in a single
jealous male god of uncertain temper represents a "higher"
spiritual state than the belief in many gods, male and
female alike, each an embodiment of some aspect of human
life as it can be empirically known and experienced.
-- Vincent Scully

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell
it about other people.
-- Virginia Woolf

Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than
brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.
-- Virginia Woolf
   "Mrs. Dalloway"

Computer industry: Industry in which the number of units
sold of any given product is inversely proportional to its
technical excellence.  See also: MS-DOS, MS-Windows, PC, X,
QWERTY, 80x86, TrueType.
-- Volker Herminghaus-Shirai

If God created us in his own image we have more than
reciprocated.
-- Voltaire

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.
-- Voltaire

Gospel: Signifies news.  The good news that the gospel of
the Christians came to announce to them that their God is a
God of wrath, that he has predestined the far greater number
of them to hell-fire, that their happiness depends on their
pious imbecility, their holy credulity, their sacred
ravings, on the evil they do to one another through hatred
of one for another ...  and on their antipathy for and
persecution of all who do not agree with them or resemble
them.
-- Voltaire

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have
imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity;
and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads
men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning
of their color.
-- Voltaire

The only way to understand what mathematicians mean by
infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.
-- Voltaire

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the
established authorities are wrong.
-- Voltaire

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while
Nature cures the disease.
-- Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-- Voltaire

What is tolerance?  -- it is the consequence of humanity.
We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon
reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of
nature.
-- Voltaire

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom,
those who wish to tyrannize will do so.
-- Voltairine de Cleyre

Et puis Mother Fucker veut dire that you are the Mother of
all Fuckers (in the Saddam sense).
-- W.A. Simon

Hope is merely disappointment deferred.
-- W. Burton Baldry

Mae West: a plumber's idea of Cleopatra. 
-- W.C. Fields

I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
-- W.C. Fields

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a
week.
-- W.D. Howells

   There will be no peace.
Fight back, then, with such courage as you have
And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,
   Clear in your conscience on this:
Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now;
   They hate for hate's sake.
-- W.H. Auden

I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one
party to a homosexual act to remain passive -- it's so
undemocratic.  Sex must be mutual.  You must go to bed with
friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in
beauty or desire.  That's what makes me think that American
queers have a guilt complex -- there's no feudal tradition
here as there is in Europe.  I feel as if I ask a member of
the lower classes there to go to bed, it's his duty to do
so.
-- W.H. Auden

What the American male really wants is two things: he wants
to be blown by a stranger while reading a newspaper and he
wants to be fucked by his buddy when he's drunk.  Everything
else is society.
-- W.H. Auden

Private faces in public places/ Are wiser and nicer/ Than
public faces in private places.
-- W.H. Auden

It seems to be a law of language that happiness, like
goodness, is almost impossible to describe, while conflict,
like evil, is all too easy to depict.
-- W.H. Auden

Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to
get up fear life.
-- W.H. AUden

There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old,
therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new,
therefore it is better."
-- W.R. Inge

Excess on occasion is exhilarating.  It prevents moderation
from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
-- W. Somerset Maugham

Time, because it is so fleeting, time, because it is beyond
recall, is the most precious of human goods and to squander
it is the most delicate form of dissipation in which man can
indulge.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
   "The Bum"

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. 
-- Walt Disney

The most telling thing about Perot's character in the bio
was the revelation of what Ross considered to be the
proudest moment of his life.  Now, mind you, this is a man
who has accomplished quite a lot in his life.  First in his
class at the Naval Academy, IBM's top salesman for many
years, self-made billionaire, etc.  Yet the proudest moment
in his life was not graduating top at Annapolis, not being a
star at IBM, not getting married, having kids or even making
his first million nor even billion dollars.  No, the
proudest moment in H.  Ross Perot's life was when he became
an Eagle Scout!  *That* speaks volumes for the man's
mind-set.
-- Walt Peterson

I mind how we lay such a transparent summer morning,/ How
you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over
upon me,/ And parted my shirt from my bosom-bone, and
plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,/ And reach'd
till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
-- Walt Whitman

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass all the argument of the earth,/ And I know that
the hand of God is the promise of my own,/And I know that
the spirit of God is the brother of my own,/ And that all
the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my
sisters and lovers,/ And that a kelson of the creation is
love, And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the
fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,/
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder,
mullein and poke-weed.
-- Walt Whitman

The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from
their long hair,/ Little streams passed all over their
bodies.  An unseen hand also passed over their bodies, It
descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.  The
young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to
the sun....they do not ask who seizes fast to them, They do
not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,/ They do not think whom they souse with spray.
-- Walt Whitman

Prodigal!  you have given me love!....therefore I to you
give love!  O unspeakable passionate love!  Thruster holding
me tight and that I hold tight!  We hurt each other as the
bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.
-- Walt Whitman

Washes and razors for foofoos....for me freckles and a
bristling beard.
-- Walt Whitman

Blind loving wrestling touch!  Sheathed hooded sharptoothed
touch!  Did it make you ache so leaving me?
-- Walt Whitman

Span of youth!  Ever-pushed elasticity!  Manhood balanced
and florid and full!/ My lovers suffocate me!/ Crowding my
lips, and thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through
nights and public halls....coming naked to me at night.
-- Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
-- Walt Whitman
   "Leaves of Grass," 1855

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
-- Walter Bagehot

Absence of evidence should never be mistaken for evidence
of absence. 
-- Walter Lewin

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
-- Walter Lippmann

"PC" (your term) was developed as a substitute for use by
folks who are unable to learn manners and common sense.  It
is your *friend*.  The rest of us don't have to worry about
it.
-- Wayne Hughes

If all that a man can understand were all there is, if there
were no mystery, then the mind would be trapped, and damned
within its limits.  One should rejoice in understanding, but
rejoice also in failing to understand, for in that failure
the mind is set free.
-- Wendell Berry

I don't think drag necessarily has anything to do with
wimmin -- it's about ladies.
-- Wendy Thrash

I'm not robbing the cradle, she's robbing the grave.
-- Wendy Thrash

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke
about them.
-- Werner Heisenberg

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ...
and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled
labor.
-- Wernher von Braun

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them
all.
-- Wes Barris

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the Pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
-- Wilfred Owen
   "Poems" (1920), Preface

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
-- Will Durant

The world is full of cactus, but we don't have to sit on it.
-- Will Foley

Things will get better, despite our efforts to improve them.
-- Will Rogers

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
-- Will Rogers

We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the
curb and clap as they go by.
-- Will Rogers

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole
government working for you.
-- Will Rogers

Even if you're on the right track, you'll still get run over
if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers

You can't say that civilization don't advance, for in every
war they kill you in a new way.
-- Will Rogers

You never know what is enough until you know what is more
than enough.
-- William Blake

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will
avoid you.
-- William Blake

Exuberance is beauty. 
-- William Blake

A sincere belief that anything is so will make it so.
-- William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would
appear to man as it is, infinite.
-- William Blake

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: The
bad artist seems to copy a great deal.  The good one really
does copy a great deal.
-- William Blake

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become
wise. 
-- William Blake

The strongest poison ever known/ Came from Caesar's laurel
crown.
-- William Blake

Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache:
Do be my enemy--for friendship's sake.
-- William Blake

The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we
never know what is enough until we know what is more than
enough. 
-- William Blake

I must invent my own philosophical systems, or else be
enslaved by other mens'.
-- William Blake

Although plastic was brought into industrial use in 1909 by
L.H.  Baekeland of Yonkers, it was not until after World War
II that the modern miracle substance was used in a wide
variety of consumer goods, among them speedboats, dentures
and flamingos.  Previously flamingos were made of cement.
Before that they were made by other flamingos.
-- William E. Geist
   The New York Times

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords but a slender
guarantee of being right.
-- William Ewart Gladstone

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would
affront your intelligence.
-- William F. Buckley, Jr.

I write to say "no" to death. 
-- William Faulkner

An artist is a creature driven by demons.  He don't usually
know why they chose him and he's usually too busy to wonder
why.
-- William Faulkner

Human life is at once a conspiracy to prove us of small or
no end, and a conspiracy of incidents and images to lead us
to a beginning again.
-- William Goyen

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
-- William Hazlitt

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it
ceases to be a subject of interest.
-- William Hazlitt

The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the
universe seems to be missing. 
-- William J. Broad

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be
appreciated.
-- William James

A great many people think they are thinking when they are
only rearranging their prejudices. 
-- William James

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that
will outlast it.
-- William James

Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they
may appear.  I taught elementary calculus here at the
University of SLACK for several years, and have observed
these folks carefully.  Although some of them looked like
they had SLACK, it's clear to me that this was just the
result of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest.
I mean, those guys don't watch enough television to have
real SLACK.
-- William K. Glunt

Fundamentalism to me boils down to an inability to
distinguish the sign from the thing signified--thus a fetus
is a baby, song lyrics about sex are the same as sex,
testifying about what Jesus has done in your life is the
same as Jesus doing things in your life, etc.
-- William Meikrantz

And it does matter.  An honest man or woman is an honest man
or woman more because he or she is honest in the small,
everyday things that "don't matter" individually, but which
make up a well-lived life, than because of some single great
temptation that was passed.  A person who is concerned about
individual rights or about individual dignity makes his or
her difference not because of any sweeping great statement
or action, but because of the accretion of small,
individually seemingly insignificant acts that spread that
dignity and confirm those rights through every action they
take.  It matters because every action you take, and every
action I take is an expression of the human spirit.
-- William Oliver

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
-- William Osler

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.
-- William Penn

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than
from the arguments of its opposers.
-- William Penn
   "Fruits of Solitude"

I am an old-fashioned man: I don't like informers.  It looks
like Meese and Reagan, and now Bush, intend to turn the
United States into a nation of mainstream rats.
-- William S. Burroughs

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only
much, much better. 
-- William S. Burroughs

In deep sadness there is no sentimentality.
-- William S. Burroughs

We know Job suffered and we know he was good, even though
his friends say "Well, there's got to be a reason for
suffering, so you must have sinned." When some of my
right-wing friends suggest that AIDS is a scourge against
homosexuals, some sort of moral judgement, the answer is in
the Book of Job: It says suffering is no evidence of sin.
-- William Safire
   "The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today's Politics"

Kids are always the only future the human race has.
-- William Saroyan

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do
not necessarily require happiness.
-- William Saroyan

I think it's important we are sensitive to how racism,
sexism and homophobia work differently from each other.  The
point is not to pretend they're all the same, but to form
alliances based on common ground.
-- William Tsun-Yuk Hsu

For most bigots, the mere existence of gay people is
anti-social behavior.
-- William Tsun-Yuk Hsu

A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the
moment.
-- Willis Player

Because we respond to common symbols in common ways, all of
us are under a form of mass hypnosis.  To be aware of the
process is to wake a bit from the trance, to pause a moment
before barking at the sound of the bell.
-- Wiloch
   "Codes and Chaos"

I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your
effort to believe it.
-- Wilson Mizner

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of
the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
-- Winston Churchill

Who is not liberal when young, does not have a heart.  Who
is not conservative when old, does not have a brain.
-- Winston Churchill

I do not like the man: he has all of the virtues I detest
and none of the vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill

He has all the qualities of a dog -- except fidelity.
-- Winston Churchill

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going
to do is make the rubble bounce.
-- Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of
blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal
sharing of miseries.
-- Winston Churchill

Argument may not be effective, but it is the best sport.
-- Winston Churchill

This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong.
-- Wolfgang Pauli

Once lead the American people into war, and they'll forget
there ever was such a thing as tolerance.  To fight you must
be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality
will enter into every fiber of our national life.
-- Woodrow Wilson

Unrequited love is the only sort that lasts.
-- Woody Allen

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad.
The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking
hours much more.
-- Woody Allen

Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty
experiences go, it's one of the best.
-- Woody Allen

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf
won't get much sleep.
-- Woody Allen

Don't knock masturbation.  It's sex with someone I love.
-- Woody Allen

Sex between a man and a woman can be wonderful; provided you
get between the right man and the right woman.
-- Woody Allen

More than any time in history, mankind now faces a
crossroads.  One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness, the other to total extinction.  Let us pray
that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics
exam: I looked into the soul of another boy.
-- Woody Allen

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for
it.
-- Woody Allen

I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
-- Woody Allen

I'm not afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when
it happens.
-- Woody Allen

Sex is dirty only when it's done right. 
-- Woody Allen

80% of life is just showing up. 
-- Woody Allen

The worst you can say about God is that he's an
underachiever. 
-- Woody Allen

To *you* I am an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
-- Woody Allen

It's round the world I've traveled; it's round the world
I've roamed; but I've yet to see an outlaw drive a family
from its home.
-- Woody Guthrie
   "Pretty Boy Floyd"

You can't pay back; you can only pay forward.
-- Woody Hayes

There is no ache more deadly than the striving to be
oneself.
-- Yevgeniy Vinokurov

He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.
-- Yevgeniy Yevtushenko

A former EDS recruiter is suing the company in Michigan.
She claimed that she was fired because she refused to follow
explicit oral instructions for denying employment to certain
types of people, including people with weak handshakes
because they are probably homosexuals.
-- Ying-Da Lee

Dispensing goodwill to mankind is a hazardous business at
best. 
-- Yukio Mishima

Al hataam ve'al hareiach ein lehitvakeiach (One can't argue
about taste and smell).
-- Zev Sero

Macho does not prove mucho. 
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best
night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight
the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop
fighting.
-- e.e. cummings

 -------------------------------------------------------+----------------------
 Clark C. Matthews / IT Programmer, Analyst             | \\\\////
 Georgetown University, Medical Library (Room GM-7)     |  \\\///  Never Again,
 3900 Reservoir Road NW,Washington, DC 20007            |   \\//  Never Forget!
 (202) 687-1035   matthewc@apollo.dml.georgetown.edu    |    \/
 +------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
 |   Disclaimer:  All opinions expressed here are those of the accounts       |
 |                registered user and not those of Georgetown University.     |
 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+