``God is a comedian, playing to an audience that's too afraid to laugh.'' (Voltaire) % People who make no mistakes do not usually make anything. % ``[A pessimist is] someone who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.'' (Shaw) % ``A little inaccuracy can save tons of explanation.'' (Saki) % ``All human actions are equivalent, and all are doomed to failure.'' (Sartre) % ``A cynic is a man who, upon smelling flowers, looks around for a coffin.'' (Mencken) % Curiosity kills more mice than cats. % ``Culture is, roughly, anything we do which the monkeys don't.'' (Raglan) % Birth, n., the first and direst of all disasters. (Bierce) % Blow your mind. Smoke gunpowder. % ``Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.'' (Gell-Mann) % Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever. % ``History repeats itself; historians repeat each other.'' (Guedella) % ``History is the sum total of things which could have been avoided.'' (Adenauer) % ``Humankind cannot bear very much reality.'' (Elliot) % If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of? % `It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is rarely a mistake.' (Mencken) % ``Odd things, animals. Dogs look up to you. Cats look down to you. Only pigs see you as an equal.'' (Churchill) % ``Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.'' (Hanlon) % Everyone rises to his level of incompetence. (the Peter principle) % The meek may inherit the earth - but not its mineral rights. (Getty) % ``... a difficulty for every solution'' (Samuel, on the Civil Service) % ``There will be no more misery... when the world is our rotisserie.'' (Tom Lehrer) % Midget psychic escapes prison: small medium at large % ``Democracy is... the worship of jackals by jackasses.'' (Mencken) % ``EC institutions have produced European beets, butter, cheese, wine, veal and even pigs. But they have not produced Europeans.'' (Weiss) % ``Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.'' (Hubbard) % ``... a place where the money falls apart in your hands, but you can't tear the toilet paper.'' (Wilder, on France) % ``Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.'' (Thurber) % Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you % Some things have to be believed to be seen % ``An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.'' (Wilde) % ``Everybody has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses.'' (Churchill) % Life is an hereditary disease % ``A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.'' (Carlyle, looking at the stars) % ``... If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute.'' (Bierce) % You cannot win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing (the third law) % Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. % Go mad this weekend: buy some beef! (advert at a supermarket) % The trouble with the rat race is that, even if you win, you're still a rat % Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday % ``Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.'' (Mencken) % ``Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when one finds a trout in the milk.'' (Thoreau) % The University of California Department of Statistics... where mean is normal, and deviation standard % The theory is based on arithmetic overflow, qualified names, and axial lead resistors (Purgathofer, from Beware of VIDEA) % Q - What warning was given by you? A - Horn Q - What warning was given by the other party? A - Moo (insurance claim form) % ``It is much easier to apologise than to get permission.'' (Grace Hopper) % ``When our backs are against the wall we must turn round and fight.'' (John Major) % Politicians are like nappies. They should be changed often, and for the same reason. % A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of everything before he destroys it % The ship sank, the South lost and the sled got tossed in the fire. Get over it. % ``In view of the fact that God limited man's intelligence, it is a pity that He did not also limit his stupidity.'' (Adenauer) % ``Murder is always a mistake.... One should never do anything which one cannot talk about after dinner.'' (Wilde) % Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says (newspaper headline) % British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands (newspaper headline) % Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told (newspaper headline) % Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case (newspaper headline) % ``Most photographers have learned the hard way that satisfactory results cannot be obtained without loading the camera with film.'' (Philip Greenspun) % War is Peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is Strength (1984) % Early [ethernet] developers... objected to a roundoff error that exceeded the ARPANET's entire bandwidth, but marketing won out. (Evi Nemeth) % I can see clearly now the rain has gone/ But it looks like someone's going to drop the bomb (Alice What's The Matter, Terrorvision) % The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity (anonymous) % ``The English people are like the English beer-- froth on top, dregs at the bottom; the middle, excellent.'' (Voltaire) % Theoreticians have always succeeded in providing an understanding for all observed phenomena--even those which later proved to be incorrect (anonymous) % A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy (Max Weinreich) % That all men should be brothers is the dream of men who have no brothers % ``Mr. Mandelson said it was an historic day when the politicians took charge of their own affairs.'' (sic.) (News report) % `Canada: Labyrinth of Death' (title of television documentary) % Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God. % ``Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.'' (Garrison Keillor) % With Age comes Wisdom -- but sometimes Age travels alone % `Dolly is unique.' (news article on Dolly the cloned sheep) % Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket? % `My heart bleeds.' `That's how it works.' % Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end % ``Decommissioning is the perpetual rock upon which we have come adrift'' (Peter Mandelson) % One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do -- and always a clever thing to say (Will Durant) % Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room! (from `Dr. Strangelove') % You can check out any time you like... but you can never leave (from `Hotel California', The Eagles) % If they existed, they would be here (Fermi) % Mr Newton is trying to collapse the star. Mr Pauli is trying to save it. Who wins? Mr Chandrasekhar is the referee. (physics lecture) % ``I need an immediately distinguishable character... so I'll use something that no-one will recognise.'' (maths lecture) % ``Damn! I'm running out of integers!'' (maths lecture) % ``How come we play war and not peace?'' ``Too few role models.'' (Calvin And Hobbes) % Q. Can I make copies of the copyright form? (US Copyright Office FAQ) % Diplomacy is the art of saying `Nice Doggie!', until you can find a rock (Wynn Catlin) % Brain, n., apparatus with which we think that we think (Bierce) % ``Any person who knowingly causes a nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion is guilty of an offence....'' (Nuclear Explosions Act, 1998) % Yorkshire Water has been deluged by a flood of complaints following its poor handling of the drought (BBC news) % ``Hello,'' he lied. (Don Carpenter, quoting a Hollywood agent) % Never has one man's death brought so much pleasure to so many people (newspaper obituary of Stalin) % ``You have to be careful with referendums; they don't always give the result you want'' (Trevor Phillips, in a London mayoral debate) % ``We will also be working with the victims and perpetrators of crime...'' (Labour party campaign leaflet) % ``I have a demonstration... but we'll leave it to the end because I can't really carry on after it, as you will see.'' (Physics lecture, on nuclear weapons) % The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. (Calvin and Hobbes) % Life-- some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant (Anonymous) % ``... during slow news periods the major networks kill celebrities and make it look accidental. Personally, I won't board an airplane unless the newspaper is packed with good stories.'' (Scott Adams) % I have a sure-fire idea for a hit TV show... it will be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten By A Shark.' (Dave Barry) % A half-truth is like half a brick-- you can throw it further % ``We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally.'' (Nguyen Co Thatch, Vietnamese Foreign Minister) % ``The effect of a bisection will in effect create two separate monopolies.'' (Judge Jackson, Microsoft antitrust hearing) % ``This tree is deciduous. It is not dead. Leaves will appear in the spring.'' (label on sapling) % ``How are you... going to respond when the Clock-Radio of Challenge emits the Irritating Buzz of Opportunity?'' (Dave Barry) % ``Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.'' (Hubbard) % ``Any design problem can be solved by adding a level of indirection, apart from having too many levels of indirection.'' (Cargill) % Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it. % If you see a long line of rats streaming off of a ship, the correct assumption is not `Gosh, I bet that's a real nice boat now that those rats are gone.' (Mike Sphar) % The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm (Travis McGee) % You need to supply a fax number in order for your request not to receive fax notifications to be processed (from a Microsoft web site) % Television is a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done. % ``If one is sailing on the Titanic, it is best to live in a lifeboat.'' (Danish minister, on exchange-rate policy) % ``Suspecting the action was suspicious, the officer ordered both of them to raise their hands.'' (from The Skagit Valley Herald) % ``Some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians, and to wonder, therefore, how they got that way.'' (Tom Lehrer) % ``Smile,'' someone said. ``It could be worse.'' So I did, and it was. % ``A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history -- with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.'' (Mitch Ratcliffe, in `Technology Review', 1992) % If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. (Galbraith) % The trouble with conspiracy theories is that they assume the government is organised. % ``Think about the average person. Now, half the people out there, by definition, are even dumber than that.'' (L. Ron Hubbard, attrib.) % ``... the reason soldiers retire early is that, at about age 40 - 45, they realise that war is dangerous.'' (anon.) % ``While you're waiting, read the free novel we sent you. It's a Spanish story about a guy named `Manual'.'' (from `Dilbert') % An Englishman thinks that 100 miles is a long way; an American thinks that 100 years is a long time. % ``Fog In Channel: Continent Cut Off'' (newspaper headline, c. 1905) % ``What lawyers call intellectual property is no more than theft from the public domain.'' (Andy Mueller-Maguhn) % ``I won't let you in until you explain the ending of the movie.'' (unknown US immigration officer, to Arthur C. Clarke, 1969) % I can't explain glacial motion/ Or why Los Angeles don't drop into the ocean (`Naked And Famous', Presidents of the USA) % ``Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put in to it.'' (Tom Lehrer) % ``There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.'' (C. Hoare) % ``What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter as if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?'' (Richard Feynman) % ``I've seen it. It's rubbish.'' (Marvin, from `The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy', by Douglas Adams) % ``The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.'' (Mencken) % ``Listen three eyes, don't try to outweird me. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.'' (Zaphod, from `The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy', by Douglas Adams) % ``The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision making ability to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.'' % I stops when I'm requested, although it spoils the ride/ So he can shout `Get out of it, we're full right up inside'. (Flanders and Swann, `A Transport of Delight') % ``I'd like to see anyone-- prophet, king or god-- who could get a thousand cats to agree on anything.'' (Neil Gaiman) % ``There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?'' (Dick Cavett) % ``It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.'' (From `Edpress News') % ``The male shall be deemed to embrace the female.'' (from the constitution of a university Methodist Society) % ``It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.'' (George W. Bush) % I believe the apparent legitimacy [of the curve] is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered. (Lucas Kovar) % ``I wouldn't call Civil Service delays `tactics', Minister,'' he replied smoothly. ``That would be to mistake lethargy for strategy.'' (Humphrey Appleby, from `Yes, Minister', Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay) % ``Speculation, by definition, is untrue.'' (Peter Mandelson, in a BBC radio interview) % ``Man, not God, made Man's laws. And God's, too.'' (anonymous, graffito seen on the East London Line) % ``Knock hard. Life is deaf.'' (Arnold Wesker) % Hey-ey that leg was fine/ You mean to tell me that this stuff happens all the time? (`He Got The Wrong Foot Amputated', `Weird' Al Yankovic) % Space Food Hideous -- But It Costs A Lot (newspaper headline) % ``[Ham the chimpanzee, upon returning from orbit, was] a thoroughly infuriated space veteran who bared his fangs and bit anything... he could reach.'' (William Burrows, from `This New Ocean') % ``The practical scientist is trying to solve tomorrow's problem with today's computer; the computer scientist... often has it the other way around.'' (from `Numerical Recipes in C') % Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt % ``The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.'' (John Lawton) % ``... you've left the lens cap on your mind again.'' (from `Pinky and The Brain') % ``I don't know anything about music. In my line of work you don't have to.'' (Elvis Presley) % Always remember that you are unique, just like everybody else. % Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (tr. ``Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.'') % ``What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.'' (Richard Harkness) % ``There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.'' (Bjarne Stroustroup) % Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask ``Why me?'' Then a voice answers ``Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.'' (Charlie Brown, from `Peanuts', Charles Schultz) % ``Well, we can't stay all night here with a hyaena.'' ``I don't know what your ideas of comfort are, but I shouldn't think of staying here even without a hyaena.'' (Saki, from `Esme') % I stumbled around 'til I found another bar/ Which was good because I couldn't find my car/ ... And now I've got a headache the size of Arkansas. (`How'd The Date End?', The Mr. T Experience). % ``... and I live at number 5 Five Drive.'' (`How'd The Date End?', The Mr. T Experience). % ``I have a sneaking sympathy for Belgium, as a land where, by accident of geography, too often other people have chosen to hold their wars.'' (Alan Follett) % ``The only reason [George W. Bush] gets lost in thought is because it is unfamiliar territory.'' (newspaper editorial) % ``Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.'' (G. K. Chesterton) % ``History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other alternatives.'' (Abba Eban) % ``The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Samson's time.'' (Richard Nixon) % ``[American] football combines the two worst features of American life: violence and committee meetings.'' (George Will) % A person is only as big as the thing that makes him angry. % ``Pray: v, To ask that the laws of the Universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.'' (Ambrose Bierce, from `The Devil's Dictionary') % ``I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.'' (Richard Nixon, on Watergate, 1978) % ``If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.'' (US spokesman, on news film of Iraqi soldiers killed by helicopter gunfire) % ``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) % ``... that night when, according to legend, an RCA Marketing Manager received a phone call from a disturbed customer. His 301 [typesetter] had just hyphenated `God'.'' (Paul E. Justus, quoted in `The TeXbook') % ``Making canned cola requires millions of dollars in abstruse gear and manufacturing gizmos. It's easier to make nerve gas than manufacture cola.'' (from the OpenCola.com soft drink recipe) % ``The peak years of our intellectual development are between the ages of four and eighteen. At age four, we knew all the questions; at eighteen, all the answers.'' % ``Warning-- do not look directly into LASER with remaining eye.'' % ``Note that you do not need a parachute to sky-dive. You need a parachute to sky-dive twice.'' % viral marketing doesn't work... tell everyone you know % ``The Fifth Law of Pipes: The outside diameter must exceed the inside diameter; otherwise the hole will be on the outside of the pipe.'' % ``I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, `Whoa, I'm way too high'.'' (Bruce Baum) % ``It's like having Valentine's Day once a month.'' (Jeff Parke, on the monthly arrival of bills) % ``Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think.'' (Scott Adams, from `Dilbert') % ``Listen-- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.'' (Monty Python) % Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheeps' bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes. (from `Monty Python and the Holy Grail') % ``If we do not conjure up a war into being, certainly no one else will do so.'' (Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter, German Foreign Minister, 1910) % ``Foot-and-mouth believed to be first virus unable to spread through Microsoft Outlook'' (spoof headline) % ``... a fiendishly clever attempt to keep things from being simple...'' (Burton Malkiel, on the concept of discounting of securities) % ``For a second year, Mongolia is suffering winter conditions unmatched in living memory.'' (BBC News) % Stuff falls from sky all the time (AP headline) % The Clairvoyant Society of London will not meet Tuesday because of unforeseen circumstances (announcement in the Financial Times) % ``Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.'' (Groucho Marx) % DO NOT THROW STONES AT THIS NOTICE (notice on a beach, southern England) % My candle burns at both ends;/ It will not last the night./ But ah my foes and oh my friends,/ It gives a lovely light. (Edna St. Vincent Millay) % language not worship must pink delirious sleep produce (fridge poetry) % ``Don't worry, T. V. -- we'll lick those yellow bastards yet.'' (US Navy Secretary Frank Knox, to Chinese ambassador T. V. Soong, 1942) % ``Unacknowledged poets are the legislators of the world.'' (quoted from New Statesman by A. Monkhouse, 1933) % ``You can't say that, because it's true.'' (unnamed Russian censor, to Malcom Muggeridge, 1933) % ``Vote Labour -- Sleep Tory'' (unofficial slogan of Oswald Mosley) % Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he gets hit by an American nuclear submarine. (seen on the internet) % Arthur: Why should a rock hum? Ford: Perhaps it feels good about being a rock. (from `The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy', by Douglas Adams) % ``... putting uranium in people's mouths might possibly give them cancer and kill them. On the other hand, their teeth looked great.... The industry was given a federal exemption to continue using uranium.'' (Cecil Adams) % Never criticise somebody until you have walked a mile in their shoes. That way, they're a mile away, and you have their shoes. % ``Never drink water -- look what it does to the bottoms of ships!'' (W. C. Fields) % ``You've got to remember most anarchists don't get up that early....'' (Tony Harris, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, describing events during the morning of May Day 2001) % ``I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less.'' (Linus Torvalds on Microsoft executive Craig Mundie) % ``R2-D2 clearly couldn't give a toss about anything, and tells everyone exactly what he thinks of them (why else do you think the editors insisted on bleeping out everything he says?)'' (J. R. Searle) % ``I am Ozymandias; look upon my toaster and despair!'' (graffito on toaster, found in a student kitchen) % ``Virtually none of the utopian projections of my youth came true.... Where are the flying cars?'' (Robert Kolker) % ``Do we really need two North Dakotas? I mean, we already have South Dakota as an emergency spare.'' (Scott Adams) % When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case the afterlife is like the Inland Revenue. % Brian: You have to be different! Crowd: Yes, we are all different! Quiet voice: I'm not! (from `The Life of Brian') % ``If you're of average intelligence, you've already outwitted most burglars.'' (Chris MacKenzie) % ``Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.'' (Winston Churchill, attrib.) % ``Maybe this world is another planet's hell.'' (Aldous Huxley) % To an optimist, the glass is half full. To a pessimist, the glass is half empty. To an engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. % ``You started to run, but you didn't get far/ 'Cause under your arm was a VCR.'' (The Offspring) % ``Beds Will Be Made Up As Laid Down In Standing Orders.'' (US Air Force) % ``...we must explain to our friends and allies, as well as Russia, ....'' (George W. Bush) % ``As Lord Denning said, there's no smoke without fire: Nil Combustibus Profumo.'' (Flanders and Swann) % ``We overbooked. But I can give you the co-pilot's seat if you know how to fly a 747.'' (Scott Adams, from `Dilbert') % ``Normal people work, eat, breed, sleep and excrete. The rest of the time they're watching other people eat, breed, sleep and excrete on reality TV.'' (seen on the internet) % ``He was cleared of two counts involving an anteater.'' (BBC News) % ``This game is played in the same way as Musical Chairs, without, however, using chairs.'' (D Minter) % ``WATCH A REAL WAR from a glass-bottomed helicopter... More Realistic than DVD.'' (from `TV Go Home') % ``The idea for the video came to me when the head of the record company was kneeling on my windpipe.'' (Jamie Hewlett) % ``If loss of sight occurs, see a doctor.'' (information on medication) % ``The reason that the sun never set on the British Empire is that God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.'' (Duncan Spaeth) % If we couldn't laugh at things that didn't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of the world around us. (Calvin and Hobbes) % ``I looked at the man's charred body and thought, `I'll never eat a pork scratching again'.'' (seen in a newspaper) % ``Sri Lankans urged to multiply for war.'' (BBC News headline) % Q: To a Political Scientist, what is the singular of the word `data'? A: `Anecdote'. (seen on the internet) % ``Tempers flared. In horror, I realized that I had created software that facilitates hatred between people! I was pretty depressed about this.'' (Drew Olbrich) % ``What is it that will make it possible to spend $20 billion of your money to put some clown on the moon? Good old American know-how -- as provided by good old Americans, like Doctor Wernher von Braun.'' (Tom Lehrer) % ``It doesn't matter how you vote, either way your planet is doomed.'' (from `The Simpsons') % ``This is dumb. Why is it any of their business to deal with the United Nations? They should fix the potholes.'' (La Verkin, Utah, resident, on the City Council's anti-UN stance) % ``Pirates only run for two things: money and public office.'' (`Yosemite Sam') % ``Good copy editors are still out there, trying somehow to sweep the ocean back with a broom.'' (Jeff Taylor) % ``I had one [good seventh grade teacher]. Smart, witty, excellent communicator, young, and beautiful. Naturally, she fell over dead in class from a brain haemorrhage.'' (seen on the internet) % ``Sure, we humans pulled the levers and poked the chads, but in the end the machines did the counting and elected one of their own.'' (Scott Adams, on Dick Cheney) % ``This then, was the apex of Soviet 1960's electronic... or at least electric, design-- a safety system that both causes, and worsens, disasters.'' (Ami Silberman, on Soviet moon rockets) % ``Under whose authority did you decide to destroy that planet?'' ``It was according to your orders, Lord Grater. You said, `If any unauthorised ship leaves that planet, destroy it'.'' (from Sluggy Freelance) % ``It is apparently not OK to remove A-bombs from Los Alamos property.'' (Philip Greenspun, from `Travels with Samantha') % ``We apologise for the error in the last edition, in which we stated that `Mr X is a Defective in the Police Force'. We meant, of course, that 'Mr X is a Detective in the Police Farce'.'' (correction in small town newspaper) % The Boss: What makes you think my mother is a moron? Dilbert: She fed you. (Scott Adams) % ``... the move [by Los Angeles County to tax satellites in geostationary orbit] is legal, say state and county tax attorneys. That's because, they say, nobody else is taxing the satellites.'' (from the Los Angeles Times) % Dilbert: Do you think you might be abusing your power? Wally: What would be the other reasons to have power? (Scott Adams) % ``... the leaders of the world's richest countries and Russia....'' (BBC news, description of the Genoa G8 summit) % ``What's the difference between [high] school [in the United States] and prison? In prison you get cable TV.'' (from the Chicago Tribune) % ``It is clear the state government will need to look at changing the law in order to protect people too stupid to protect themselves.'' (Iain Evans, Australian Environment minister, on `white shark petting') % THIS ARTICLE DOES NOT INCLUDE A SCHEDULE 3 INTERLINER % ``If ignorance were cornflakes, you'd be General Mills.'' (Cecil Adams, berating a correspondent in a newspaper column) % ``People fought in two World Wars for a society in which a committee could be free to bring us Unicode symbol 0x2619, the Reversed Rotated Floral Heart Bullet.'' (Andrew Bolt) % Roy Hudd: I've just done this radio show where I never met any of the other actors and I didn't understand what any of it was about. Stephen Moore: Ah, yes, I expect that's the thing I'm in. (describing `The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy') % I don't care who the audience picks/ I'd rather be killed with a big sharp stick.... (`How'd The Date End?', The Mr. T Experience) % ``DO NOT perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation....'' (EPA emergency care advice for victims of the nerve gas sarin) % Nuclear weapons will wipe out all life on earth, if used properly. (seen on the internet) % Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. (seen on the internet) % ``Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.'' (Rick Polito, describing film `The Wizard Of Oz') % ``Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.'' (Wernher von Braun) % Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young % Dilbert: Rats cry when they hear about my life. Dogbert: It never pays to listen. (Scott Adams) % ``Oh my god, I was wrong! It was Earth all along! You've finally made a monkey out of me.'' (`Stop the Planet of the Apes! I want to get off', from `The Simpsons') % One thing is for sure: the sheep is not a creature of the air. They have enormous difficulty in the comparitively simple act of perchin'. (Monty Python) % If you would like to buy marijuana, please press the `#' key now.... (answering machine message) % ``Faced with a choice between a bald man and a fat man, Conservatives naturally chose a bald man because the last Conservative leader was a bald man. It's in their nature-- they're Conservatives.'' (Steve Kimberley) % ``I don't want to go to heaven with a headache. I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it.'' (from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams) % Experience is what enables you to recognise a mistake the second time you make it. % ``Zero completely messed up Roman mathematics by its absence.'' (Simon Singh) % ``After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.'' (P. J. O'Rourke) % The Boss: If the cops find out, we can frame my clone for the crime. Dilbert: That is so wrong. The Boss: Why? He'd do the same thing to me. (Scott Adams) % Knowledge is power -- Power corrupts -- Study hard -- Be evil! % ``If you owe your banker a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe your banker a million pounds, he is at your mercy.'' (John Maynard Keynes) % Hicks Nix Sticks Pix (headline, in `Variety', July 17 1935) % ``Bill Gates is very involved, but not on the side of the public domain.'' (Jamie Love, on copyright-law lobbying in the United States) % ``If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial counts, he probably would conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and crap in your sink.'' (Charles Gerba, microbiologist) % ``He managed to hoodwink not just the great and the good like Margaret Thatcher, John Major and William Hague, but many very clever people too.'' (newspaper article, describing Jeffrey Archer) % ``... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.'' (Robert Firth) % `Evans boldly put 50 atm. of Ethylene in a cell with 25 atm. of oxygen. The apparatus subsequently blew up, but luckily not before he obtained the spectra shown in fig. 8.' A J Merer and R S Mulliken, Chem. Rev. 69, 645 (1969) % ``Stupidity is like nuclear power: it can be used for good and evil And, you don't want to get any of it on you.'' (from `Dilbert') % Stupidity, the gift that keeps on giving (seen on the internet) % ``In these troubled times, perhaps we all need reminding that when we all work together and really put our minds to something, we still can't achieve the impossible.'' (from Need To Know) % ``The ATM says `DESTROY CAPITALISM' -- but then it charged me a service fee!'' (complaint about an auto-teller at Jamie Zawinski's club, `DNA Lounge') % ``Don't use nuclear weapons to troubleshoot faults.'' (actual US Air Force safety instruction) % ``Of course, it doesn't matter much where you live south of the river these days. Under the New London Plan, they're going to lump all those areas together... and call them Brighton.'' (Flanders and Swann) % ``It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.'' (Chic Murray) % ``I'm a peripheral visionary. I can't see into the future-- just off to the side.'' (Steve Wright) % ``I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit but it wouldn't matter.'' (Steve Wright) % ``If you talk about fish to a starving man, then you're a consultant.'' (Scott Adams, from `Dilbert') % ``I grew up with cartoons the way cartoons were meant to be: mice jabbing hat pins into the anuses of venal felines, tie-wearing bears confounding federal employees, squirrel-and-moose teams foiling Communist plots.'' (James Lileks) % ``... and the crowning example, the Mongols! You don't get much scruffier than that. They didn't even live in houses, and they conquered half the world.'' (Anthony Mayer) % ``Television is to news as bumper stickers are to philosophy.'' (Richard Nixon) % ``There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.'' (Frank Zappa) % ``We've heard that a million monkeys at a million typewriters could produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.'' (Robert Wilensky) % ``Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.'' (Kafka) % ``The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, `You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done'.'' (George Carlin) % ``I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.'' (Jack Handey) % ``Journalism mostly consists in saying `Lord Jones is dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.'' (G K Chesterton) % ``Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home.'' (David Frost) % ``Many people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.'' (Bertrand Russell) % ``It is easier to fight for our principles than to live up to them.'' (Alfred Adler) % ``Serendipity is looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer's daughter.'' (Hans Kornberg) % ``Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, `I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems.'' (Jamie Zawinski) % ``I believe I am the only living man to deliberately place his hands in the mouth of an attacking cougar.'' (Clarence Hall) % The computer is only a tool. Unfortunately, so is the user. (seen on the internet) % ``If you can tell good advice from bad advice, you don't need any advice.'' % ``We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department's fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely fucked.'' (Sir Richard Mottram, to Martin Sixsmith, describing the Jo Moore DTLR fiasco) % ``I had a dream about a dragon sniffing for truffles. Then I realised that it was just Oggie with a cold.'' (Dave Linton) % DRINK COFFEE -- Do stupid things faster with more energy! % ``If [flying cars] were easy to produce, we'd be walking around wearing helmets to protect us from the detritus of flying car crashes.'' (Gail Collins) % ``Some people don't like an audience when they work. Enough of them have told me so with blunt instruments that I'm a phrenologist's dream come true.'' (Calvin, as private eye Tracer Bullet, in Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes) % ``If you can tell good advice from bad advice, you don't need any advice.'' % ``Treason doth ne'er prosper / And what is the reason? If treason should prosper / None dare call it treason.'' (Glorious-Revolution-era ditty) % ``What we are looking at is bringing the gambling laws up-to-date -- the existing law is from 1968 when man hadn't even landed on the moon.'' (Penny Cobham, British Casino Association director of non sequiturs) % And all the world over, each nation's the same: They've simply no notion of playing the game. (Flanders and Swann turn their vitriol on the world outside England) % They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won. And they practice beforehand, which ruins the fun! (Flanders and Swann describe people beyond Calais) % What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course! (from Hom Sap, Private Eye) % `Isn't it surprising that the more expensive machines waste more of the user's time? A UNIX workstation will execute over one billion instructions for itself before executing even one instruction for the user.' (Haeberli and Karsh) % ``The Algernons were all from minor public schools. In the new mood of classlessness, they could plausibly carry on as if they came from major ones.'' (Clive James, on 1960s Cambridge) % ``Is there no beginning to your talents?'' (Clive Anderson, to Jeffrey Archer) % ``Self-barbering became practicable when the crisp, tapered look of the '50s gave way to shaggier styles.'' (Peter Nowak, winner, Philadephia Inquirer Cheapskate of the Year, 2002) % ``If tickets cost a pound a piece, why should you make a fuss....'' (Flanders and Swann, on 'bus fares, from A Transport Of Delight) % ``When an officer met with her, she explained how a magnetic force from space was harassing her. Police stepped up patrols.'' (from `The Arcata Eye') % ``That Ariel Sharon. Boy, he sure is controversial. Most Western countries would have to have a military coup before they enjoyed a leader of that caliber.'' (Sydney Webb) % ``Saying that road tax should be spent on transport is like saying that alcohol duty should be spent on pubs.'' (seen on the internet) % ``... Traverse the curve, carrying a spear, in a time less than that it takes for a lion to walk its own length.'' (How To Hunt A Lion: the Peano method) % `I told all of my friends how they were losers for running UNIX. They should switch to NT.... That was more or less my constant refrain until a single pivotal event changed my life: I actually tried to use NT.' (Philip Greenspun) % ``When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he's wrong. So we were often angry at each other.'' (Charles De Gaulle) % ``It just turned into a long day. And when you weigh 490 pounds, you can let people know you've had enough.'' (zookeeper Brian Rutledge, on gorilla Vip's experiences of air travel) % ``Fill your tank with 800 gallons of water. Start yesterday. Remember, a medium-sized hippo takes up at least 200 gallons. (Just out of curiosity, why do you have a hippo, anyway?)'' (USPS, how to move a hippo) % ``Today's youth should be as morally upright as are the leaders of the free world, and should never consider violence as a way of settling disputes, regardless of provocation, any more than NATO does.'' (Dan Rutter) % ``There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.'' (Otto von Bismarck) % ... You know you'll never walk alone 'cause you can't control your legs... (`Swallow Everything', The Mr. T Experience) % - Jump in the air [...] Why did you come down again? - I live 'ere. (explaining gravity: from `The Goon Show') % ``Why can't the computer understand what I mean? Forgive me for saying so, but they are worse than graduate students.'' (Vijay Pandharipande) % ``... Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not work at all.'' (George Greenstein, from `Frozen Star') % Nigel: These go to eleven. Marty: Is it any louder? Nigel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. (This Is Spinal Tap) % ``A letter was sent to yourself from ourselves.'' (unknown UK government official, to correspondent) % ``[It] became a hot water-cooler topic.'' (AP wire story) % ``My secretary said she once found an open umbrella under all the piles of rubbish on my desk.'' (Kenneth Clarke, on tidiness) % `... the lawmakers who disarmed all the non-terrorists on those four airplanes, leaving them no chance to stop the hijackers, bear part of the moral responsibility for this catastrophe.' (Eric Raymond shows us his big... gun) % ``[An] island is a region of land entirely surrounded by advice.'' (from Lord Shackleton's 1976 report on the Falkland Islands) % But as it is!... my language fails! Go out and govern New South Wales! (`Lord Lundy', Hilaire Belloc) % ``Religion is what the common people see as true, the wise people see as false, and the rulers see as useful.'' (Seneca) % ``Every profession is a conspiracy against the laiety.'' (George Bernard Shaw) % ``... you cannot make a pair of croak-voiced Daleks appear benevolent even if you dress one of them up in an Armani suit and call the other Marmaduke.'' (Dennis Potter, on ex-BBC big cheeses John Birt and Marmaduke Hussey) % ``All I ever learned from National Service was skiving and petty theft.'' (John Peel) % ``Jospin has the charisma and voter appeal which British voters have only encountered in the person of Michael Foot.'' (Ian Sykes on Lionel Jospin) % ``Some people think that the title of this song is irrelevant. But it's not an elephant. It's an 'ippopotamus.'' (groan: Flanders and Swann) % ``Fight for five minutes, then blow up the world.'' (Doug Muir characterises NATO plans for a 1980s war in western Europe) % ``If the bookmakers are prepared to give odds on a guilty verdict, it's probably a fair trial.'' (Phil Hunt) % ``Any time you skip a commercial, you're actually stealing the programming.'' (Jamie Kellner, of television station Turner Broadcasting) % Something must be done. This is something, so we must do it. (characterising government-by-reaction) % ``Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to.'' (Hannen Swaffer) % ``Some men have a mania for Greek and Latin quotations: this is peculiarly to be avoided. It is like pulling up the stones from a tomb wherewith to kill the living.'' (from `Enquire Within Upon Everything') % ``I never make predictions. I never have, and I never will.'' (Tony Blair) % ``Computer games don't affect kids. I mean, if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.'' (Marcus Brigstocke) % ``Told young women he was God and they believed him.'' (capsule description of Jesus of Nazareth) % ``... entrepreneurs with minimal state oversight, like dot-commers with muskets.'' (Doug Muir describes the Spanish Conquistadors in Central America) % ``What would you call the creation of the universe?'' ``The Horrendous Space Kablooie!'' (Calvin and Hobbes) % ``We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is.'' (David Boylan, to journalists Jane Akre and Steve Wilson of Fox television) % ``If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.'' (Thomas De Quincey) % ``My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you that today I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.'' (Ronald Reagan, sound check inadvertently broadcast) % Don't argue with idiots-- they drag you down to their level, and then they win because they're playing on home ground. % ... nothing you will ever do in that car will ever be as cool as when a courier buddy of mine wrote, in his own blood, on the door of the car that ran him down, ``LEARN TO DRIVE ASSHOLE.'' (Mike Linkovich, `How Do Drivers Suck?') % ``Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.'' (Abbie Hoffman) % ``... and we're all educated followers of fascism....'' (song, to the tune of `Dedicated Follower of Fashion', from The Now Show) % ``You can't make what you can't measure because you don't know when you've got it made.'' (Irving Gardner) % Latin is a dead language,/ As dead as dead can be./ It killed off all the Romans/ And now it's killing me. (ancient schoolboy refrain) % On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. (from The Far Side) % ``I can't find the [Latin] translation for `responsibility', which might explain a lot of Roman history....'' (Gareth Wilson) % ``The only limitless human capacity is the capacity for self delusion, one that proponents of risk homeostasis possess to an awesome degree.'' (Leon Robertson) % ``I've noticed that drivers often have trouble distinguishing [green and orange]. Presumably Northern Ireland drivers are much better with traffic lights.'' (Ben Hutchings) % ``Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?'' (Michael Moore, to teller in bank which gives out hand-guns to customers opening new accounts) % ``It just seems to me that you are wilfully entering an arse-kicking contest with a monstrous entity that has sixteen legs and no arse....'' (seen on the internet) % ``You see, in the UNIX world, `system' means `a bunch of unrelated programs'.'' (Steve Strassmann) % ``A lie can be half-way around the world before truth has got his boots on.'' (James Callaghan) % ``Because that's where the money is.'' (Willie Sutton, explaining why he robbed banks) % ``[Howe's] speech must have affected every thinking Conservative MP, and many others as well.'' (David Howell) % ``I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.'' (Motion Picture Association of America chief Jack Valenti, in court, 1982) % ``A decision is unreasonable if it [requires] a decision so unreasonable no reasonable person could have reached [it].'' (Wednesbury unreasonableness) % ``I shouldn't say `I don't think so,' although that's what I think.'' (Donald Rumsfeld) % ``We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.'' (H L Mencken) % ``Of course we are not patronising women. We are just going to explain to them, in words of one syllable, what it is all about.'' (Olga Maitland) % Suburbia: where they cut down the trees then name streets after them % ``We must get tough with the suicide bombers.'' (George W. Bush, attrib.) % ``We can still remember Reagan, even though he can't remember us.'' (Sydney Webb) % ``It's the basest form of diplomatic thuggery and a truly despicable example of a country being run by a bunch of self-serving, arrogant, piss-headed moronic assholes led by an asinine twit.'' (Keith Morrisson on the US ICC nonsense) % A friend will help you move. A real friend will help you move a body. % ``Peace means something different from `not fighting'.... Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.'' (Jo Walton) % ``Their way of life is completely different from our own... for instance, they have `Coronation Street' on a Tuesday.'' (Flanders and Swann, on Australians) % He stood upon that fateful ground, / Cast his lethargic eye around, / And said beneath his breath: / Whatever happens, / We have got / The Maxim Gun / And they do not. (Hilaire Belloc, `The Modern Traveller') % ``Remember, the plural of `moron' is `focus group'.'' (James A Wolf) % ``I don't know what it is about the American upper class, but they seem to be shedding their pubic hair at an alarming rate.'' (Barbara Ehrenreich) % ``As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.'' (Harold Macmillan) % ``... one square paving slab, two feet by three feet...'' (classified advert) % ``I have several monomanias.'' (Edward Teller) % ``It is always the best policy to speak the truth -- unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.'' (Jerome K Jerome) % Tigers don't go out on rainy nights / They've no need to whet their appetites (`Hunting Tigers out in Indiah', the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) % ``Hi, I'm [name], and I'm calling on behalf of Alliance and Leicester... I'm sorry, I mean `BarclayCard'.'' (phone call from unknown telemarketer) % ``If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or take a Pulitzer-prize-winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?'' (help wanted ad for photographer) % ``Americans' greatest fear is that America will turn out to have been a phenomenon, not a civilization.'' (Shirley Hazzard) % ``There are those who are troubled 100 percent about the situation in Vietnam. That goes double for me.'' (Lyndon Baines Johnson) % ``It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realise that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.'' (Alan Shepherd) % ``... the general perception that we have a Department For Transport and a Government Against Transport.'' (Hugo Tyson) % Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed % ``It used to be that what a writer did was type a bit and the stare out of the window a bit, type a bit, stare out of the window a bit. Networked computers make these two activities converge, because now the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are the same thing.'' (Douglas Adams) % ``That office had been created to handle press relations and psychological warfare, and I never met anyone there who seemed to realise there was a difference.'' (Michael Herr, from `Dispatches') % ``They ran so fast they forgot to take their culture back to America...'' (`The White House Burned (The War of 1812)' by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie) % It's the only war the Yankees lost, except for Vietnam And also the Alamo... and the Bay of... Ham (`The White House Burned (The War of 1812)' by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie) % So if you go to Washington, its buildings clean and nice, Bring a pack of matches and we'll burn the White House twice! (`The White House Burned (The War of 1812)' by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie) % ``Our council is strictly non-political. They're all Conservatives.'' (Flanders and Swann) % The car park is liable to flooding. If this notice is covered, do not park your car here. (notice in car park) % Alliance, n. 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. (Bierce) % Commitment can be best illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. (unknown origin) % ``As far as I can tell, we appear to be about to start a world war on purpose. This has never been done before.'' (Mitch Benn, from `The Now Show', on Iraq) % ``... it was not appropriate for the jury to make a statistical evaluation of separate items of evidence by applying mathematical formulae such as the Bayes Theorem, as such an exercise would encroach upon the jury's task of weighing up all the evidence together.'' (R v. Adams) % `Right-wing governments may sap some people's will to live and result in more suicides, conclude studies in Britain and Australia.... Britain's Conservative Party declined to comment on the findings.' (from New Scientist) % ``Then it occurred to me that I was standing there pissing on Nancy Reagan's life work, and that made me feel better about it.'' (Jamie Zawinski, commenting on a urinal soap bar marked `Say No To Drugs!') % ``There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.'' (Daniel Dennett) % ``Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.'' (Richard Whately) % ``An intellectual is somebody who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of `The Lone Ranger'.'' (John Chesson, attrib.) % ``OK, I'm gonna get your money for you. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you? You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company.'' (`Bat' Guano, to Lionel Mandrake; from `Dr. Strangelove') % ``There were only two men who stood between us and being overwhelmed by the Wehrmacht.... One was Winston Churchill and the other was Adolf Hitler.'' (Peter Sallis) % ``More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.'' (Woody Allen) % wasm (n.): an outmoded policy, belief, or enthusiasm; literally an ism of the past. % ``We apologise for the lack of seats. This is due to the volume of passengers.'' (announcement on train) % ``We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.'' (Booker T. Washington) % ``The government wants to bring an end to so-called vertical drinking.'' (from the BBC's `Today in Parliament') % ``Nuclear weapons are so dangerous that only geriatric lunatics in the Politburo should have control of them.'' (Alan Lothian characterises CND's support for unilateral disarmament) % ``Eden may have invaded Egypt, but one can't be too censorious, everybody gets a bit silly when they're stoned.'' (Jeremy Scott, from `Fast and Louche') % ``Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.'' (allegedly found in a high school essay) % ``Solutions are not the answer.'' (Richard Nixon) % ``[David Rice Atchison] wasn't sworn in, he didn't do anything presidential (I believe he took a nap), and nobody to this day is really sure if he was president or not.'' (Cecil Adams discusses succession in the US presidency) % ``Now, unfortunately, it turns out that the thing does move the way your naive, untutored, and actually incorrect argument would indicate, but that's just a pedagogical misfortune we are always running into.'' (E M Purcell, from `Life at Low Reynolds Number') % `Reading programs were set up in every city and village, and failure to attend was punishable by three years in jail.... UNESCO gave Saddam an award.' (Education, education, education, Iraq style; Mark Bowden on Saddam Hussein) % Don't look back. The lemmings might be gaining on you. % ``Sitting in a church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.'' (spotted in Strasbourg) % ``Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.'' (Margaret Thatcher) % ``My years of hip-hop sessions came in handy as I could converse well with Fast Fingers. I knew the lingo and when to use it, and as far as he was concerned, I was one of the brothers. Strangely, neither of us was one of the brothers, but I figure that's just a technicality.'' (`MixerMan') % `I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers.... What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.' (Kurt Vonnegut) % ``Official instructions are to give pigs `environmental enrichment' by providing `manipulable material' which the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last night defined as balls.'' (from The Times) % Impeccable, a., not liable to detection. (Bierce) % ``You are asking the wrong question. You are looking for the copper wires. You should be looking for the electricity.'' (Enoch Powell, to Jeremy Paxman, attrib., in answer to the question `Who are the Establishment?') % ``Computer-simulators, used to stage mock failures in the flight trainer, weren't working. This was a triumph of accurate simulation, but otherwise not amusing.'' (Gregg Easterbrook, on space shuttle development) % ``If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.'' (George W. Bush) % Free, a.: Already paid for. (Peyton Jones) % ``Like any Englishman armed with a cricket bat, he was doomed to fail.'' (Guy Ladenburg, prosecuting, comments on Paul Kelleher's first attempt to behead a statue of Margaret Thatcher) % ``You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.'' (Frank Zappa) % ``... a tribute to the countryside, and the many interesting things you may find there -- if you're not careful.'' (Flanders and Swann) % ``We had about 300 people come up here to look and I was told by the sheriff not to let anyone touch it, see. So I guarded it. But everyone was well behaved. I didn't have to get my gun.'' (Texan James Couch, on space shuttle fallout) % ``In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.'' (Hunter S. Thompson) % ``The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.'' (Samuel Huntington) % `There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain.' (Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800) % ``I speak better English than this villain Bush.'' (Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, attrib.) % ``At any moment through the fog/ There may descend a bit of dog.'' (A P Herbert on Sputnik II and Laika) % ``Falmouth Town station is closed due to flooding. Please use Falmouth Docks.'' (BBC News) % ``Who's Whom -- a sort of Who's Who for pedants.'' (Marcus Brigstocke, from `The 99p Challenge') % ``Every public action which is not customary either is wrong, or, if it is right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time.'' (Francis Cornford, Microcosmographia Academica) % ``Another sport which wastes unlimited time is Comma-hunting.'' (Francis Cornford, Microcosmographia Academica) % ``You know the world has changed when the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, Switzerland hold the Americas Cup and Germany doesn't want to go to war.'' (national stereotypes, 2003-style; seen on the internet) % ``Nothing says `unprofessional job' like wrinkles in duct tape.'' (seen on the Internet) % ``What does it mean? It means I never have to work again.'' (Don McLean, on `American Pie', attrib.) % ``Tony Blair has made `morale boosting' visits to the wives of servicemen serving in the Gulf.'' (BBC News) % ``The efficiency of the rocket launcher team was also very impaired.'' (commentary on film of British troops given LSD as part of a 1960s chemical warfare experiment) % ``It might be a good idea to toss in a nuke from time to time, just to keep the other side guessing.'' (Lyndon Johnson, on Vietnam, 1966) % ``British art-rock miserablists Radiohead.'' (Mitch Benn: one-line music criticism; from `The Now Show') % ``As for Nitel, the state telephone monopoly, the less said the better, which might well be the company's motto.'' (The Economist, on Nigeria) % ``This is why I don't trust anyone [whose] job was created after 1990.'' (describing `web design'; seen on the internet) % Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. % ``... they're not anarchists, just thugs who can't be bothered to put in the weekly commitment needed to be football hooligans.'' (Nick Barlow describes violent May Day protestors) % ``Every problem in the world can be fixed with either flowers, or duct tape, or both.'' (David Millington) % ``It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture.... It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.'' (Robert Wilson, answering a Congressional question on Fermilab) % ``What has happened to us? We have suffered a technological calamity. Television is now our form of government.'' (Kurt Vonnegut) % ``The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.'' (Hunter S. Thompson) % ``After 9/11, Bush made two statements: 1. Terrorists hate America because America is a land of freedom and opportunity; 2. We intend to attack the root causes of terrorism. Sounds like everything is going according to plan.'' (Colin Percival) % ``It is certainly going to deter the casual bomber.'' (BBC correspondent Frank Gardner on the emplacement of concrete blocks around the Palace of Westminster) % ``Has the roadmap been derailed before it has even got off the ground?'' (BBC news bulletin, on Middle East peace negotiations) % ``The second thing Gorbachev did was to introduce Russia to the market. The problem was that Russia did not have bourgeois civility, so after it was introduced to the market it did not know what to say to it.'' (Ken Macleod) % ``[John Ashcroft] is a villain [who] makes slave-owning secessionists and intern-fucking presidents look like martyred saints on the altar of our history.'' (Zack Parsons on the USA's `USA Patriot Act') % ``Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'' (Orwell, from `Politics and the English Language') % ``I shall send a big blue incorruptible policeman to lock you up and the only `monumental' work Mr. Scherman is likely to perform is breaking stones at Dartmoor.'' (Evelyn Waugh, to Life magazine, prohibiting them from reprinting his work) % ``I went into the Army for two years, and America's free today, so I think I did a good job.'' (Tom Lehrer, on conscription) % ``We will learn more about pain in Chapter 12.'' (from Bear, Connors and Paradiso, `Neuroscience') % ``He had a face like Wiley E. Coyote on receiving his Acme bill.'' % ``... food you can read by, which is called `flambé'.'' (Clement Freud, from `Freud Ego') % ``... Germany's ambassador to Britain hosted a conference on `Branding Germany' to work out how to sell Germany to the British.... Events interevened; and in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as the conference policy paper delicately explains, Germany suffered from `over-branding'.'' (from The Economist) % ``The Strategic Railway Authority is not in the business of railway lines.'' (Cambridgeshire County Councillor Shona Johnstone) % DO NOT DROP ARTICLES FROM BRIDGE (notice on a bridge in Vancouver; seen on the Internet) % ``Depending on your age, you will either be singing a song about clockwork mice who fix things, or thinking, oh my god, someone has left Edward Heath under the grill.'' (Caitlin Moran; attrib. caption under a picture of Bagpuss) % ```Our team was the worst in the First Division and I'm sure it'll be the worst in the Premier League.'' [Sir Jack actually said] ``Our tea was the worst in the First Division and I'm sure it'll be the worst in the Premier League.'' Profuse apologies.' (correction, in The Guardian) % Calvin: I saw a cloud that looked just like me! ... Obviously it's a SIGN! Hobbes: Of what? Calvin: Very peculiar high altitude winds, I guess (`Calvin and Hobbes' by Bill Waterson) % Sudden death syndrome, eh? Sounds nasty. What are the symptoms? (seen on the internet) % ``Criminals moving in on illegal food trade'' (headline in the Guardian) % ``They deny showing members of the FARC organisation how to make bombs using fake passports.'' (BBC News reveals the secrets of bomb-making) % ``Around 1,500 spectators turned up,... lured by the novel combination of death, an elephant and electricity. Mercifully, Topsy died extremely quickly, and without a trumpet, which may have had something to do with the carrots laced with cyanide that she had been fed.'' (from The Economist) % ``Burnham's ideas appear in `1984', more or less unchanged by their passage through Orwell.'' (Phil Edwards on oligarchical collectivism) % Two economists are walking along the street. The first says, ``Look, there's a £50 note on the pavement!'' The second replies, ``Don't be silly. If there were, somebody would already have picked it up.'' (ancient economics joke) % ``Actually, he's a libertarian, which, as near as I can tell, is just a Republican who doesn't believe in God.'' (Sarah Vowell) % ``I think the entire world is Swiss-made.'' ``Why do you say that?'' ``Because everyone is cuckoo.'' (David Lynch, `The Angriest Dog In The World') % WE MUST FILL THE PATRIOTIC VACUUM! Actually I think the Patriotic Vacuum is full.... WE MUST GET A LONGER CORD AND A NEW FILTER FOR THE PATRIOTIC VACUUM! (seen on the internet) % ``If I were an international spy, should I choose an aisle or a window seat?'' (burning questions of the hour: seen on the internet) % ``This is much too subtle to be considered a parody.'' (Fox News attorney Dori Hanswirth, on Al Franken's book entitled `Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right') % One night the group was over at his house and he offered to show everyone videos of the conception. The room fell suddenly silent. He finally realized what they'd assumed and said, ``No, it's in vitro fertilization!'' (seen on the internet) % ``To do each day two things one dislikes is a precept I have followed scrupulously: every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.'' (W Somerset Maugham) % `That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.' (Amanda Cross) % ``What the bloody hell is the point of 24-hour rolling news if it doesn't carry terrifying-lizard-related news?'' (Anthony Wells, on learning from the web that `a giant lizard is terrorising Beirut') % ``Do you have any French colloquial dictionaries?'' ``No, we only have French-to-English and English-to-French.'' (actual conversation with a salesperson in a Waterstones' book shop) % ``Is `colons' the plural of `semi-colon' if you know you have an even number of them?'' (David Richerby) % ``I don't care if he's dead, I still want to impeach Nixon'' (bumper sticker politics) % ``Have you always been revolutionary socialists?'' ``No, we vote Conservative.'' (Simon Hoggart, interviewing a middle-class couple at a reading of Tony Benn's speeches) % ``Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.'' (Grace Hopper) % ``Fred the Giant was a sociable fellow who would sit with the sightseers in the clubroom chatting about his life and the problems it caused.'' (information leaflet about the Barge Inn in Seend Cleeve, Wilts) % ``It's not a bomb. It's a device that explodes.'' (possibly-apocryphal statement by French spokesman, before the 1995 nuclear tests) % ``Arnie is now governor of California -- it is really a shame that this kind of scenario can't be simulated or something, instead of actually having to do it for real to see how it turns out.'' (seen on the internet) % ``I can personally testify that it does for oversleeping what the guillotine does for dandruff.'' (Cecil Adams, on alarm clocks) % ``Now, if you were a super villian with a really clever moniker and an elaborate costume to go with it, ... where would you set up your base of operations? (a) Gotham City; (b) almost anywhere else in the world where Batman DOESN'T live?'' (Alan Sharp) % ``A US tourist's trip through Bavaria ended with an unexpected visit to a supermarket when his car's navigation system led him straight through the store's doors. He depended entirely on the navigation system and did not notice approaching the supermarket until entering it.'' (news story) % A: Are you crazy? Our troops better stay in that country until it's as calm and stable as a fuckin' podiatrist's convention on a Tuesday morning. B: (Thinks) Should I care that I'm not even sure which country they're talking about? (`Get Your War On') % `Granted, as long as downtown Baghdad remains a test range for homemade rocket launchers these legal questions are likely to remain academic. And progressive or flat, my guess is that most Iraqis are going to go right on doing what they have always done to tax rates: ignore them.'' (seen on the internet) % ``Leaders are like eagles. We don't have any of them here.'' (Despair, Inc.; slogan on `demotivational' poster) % ``My motives are selfish. One day, I want to be able to vote Tory again. Like millions of others, I cannot do so while the party is led by a turnip.'' (Max Hastings, leading from the Guardian) % ``Unused to the rough and ready answering-back of British socialism, [Kruschev] remarked next day that if he lived in Britain he would be a Tory.'' (Peter Lewis, `The Fifties', on the 1955 visit of Nikita Kruschev to Britain) % ``Press button for a 60-second speech from Cecil Parkinson.'' (graffito, on electric hand drier in loo) % ``American politics is very easy to understand. They have the Republican Party, which is basically like our Conservative Party, and the Democratic Party, which is basically like our Conservative Party.'' (Peter Cook) % ``There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case....'' (Judge Denny Chin, dismissing a complaint by Fox News that Al Franken's book, `Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right' infringed the Fox trademark and was likely to confuse buyers) % ``They couldn't figure out what it was, so the robot then removed the package, aimed a shotgun at it and blew it to bits. It was totally cool.'' (Athens, GA, resident Mary Clark, on modern bomb disposal techniques) % ``One thousand years ago we wouldn't have known the news outside our village. I wish things were like that now.'' (http://themanwhofellasleep.com/gossip2.html) % ``I'm not saying we should bomb Iraq. But we've got to bomb somewhere!'' (http://themanwhofellasleep.com/gossip2.html) % ``We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It's possible that Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.'' (spokesman for Northwest Gas, quoted in the Daily Telegraph) % ``MP3s are for people who download music. People who buy Mercedes cars can afford to buy their music.'' (Mercedes dealer, to customer requesting an in-car MP3 player) % ``Whether intentionally or not, fish control and potato control were billeted together in St. John's College, Oxford, making this ancient seat of higher learning the biggest fish and chip shop the world has ever seen.'' (Peter Hennessey, on the organisation of wartime rationing) % ``Please do not urinate in this rain gauge'' (sign, allegedly found 15,000 feet up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania) % ``How can you make good ideas sound so bad?'' ``I'm an engineer.'' (Scott Adams, from `Dilbert') % ``Robert Kilroy-Silk: a man who's hard to ignore, but worth the effort.'' (Barry Cryer) % ``I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.'' (Terry Pratchett, on royalties) % Mikhail Gorbachev was once asked how -- in one word -- he would sum up the Soviet economy. `Good,' he said. Then he was asked how -- in two words -- he would sum up the Soviet economy: `Not good,' he said. (old joke, quoted by Thierry de Montbrial) % Look closer and you may recoil in surprise/ At web-footed fascists with mad little eyes! (The March of the Sinister Ducks, by The Sinister Ducks) % ``Then, arching your back and stretching upwards, bring your heads together in a Mutual Trumpeting Display so everyone will realize what an adorable couple you are.'' (Earl Vickers, from `Do It Like A Penguin') % ``... many people will not like [Times New Roman], even if they don't realise it.'' (Matthew Somerville explains why his font is better than yours) % ``They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.'' (Nelba Blandon, Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship) % ``Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.'' (Shimon Perez) % ``Started with a knife, then degenerated to a hacksaw, then a hammer and eventually a very big hammer. Suffice to say, I don't think they are in any way user serviceable.'' (Chris King, on electric toothbrush repair) % ``David Blunkett, whom I much admire....'' (Lord Tebbit) % ``Acts of violence do not help, [whichever] part of the world they might take place in....'' (John `Two Jabs' Prescott) % ``The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who do not have it.'' (George Bernard Shaw) % `Asked if Mr Desmond had called him ``a miserable little piece of excrement,'' he said: ``I think people can fill in the asterisks. It was a bit stronger than that''.' (Telegraph chief Jeremy Deedes, on Richard Desmond's negotiating skills) % ``Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in racehorses and fancy women.'' (Lord Kelvin) % ``Americans keep telling us how successful their system is -- then they remind us not to stray too far from our hotel at night.'' (unnamed European official at the 1997 Denver G8 summit) % ``Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.'' (Christopher Morley) % ``The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.'' (Bertrand Russell) % ``Commas in the New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.'' (E B White) % ``There has to be a balance between telling the truth and reassurance.'' (David Blunkett, on terrorist alerts) % ``[These atrocities] -- they all happened, and they did not happen any the less because the Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them when it is five years too late.'' (George Orwell, Looking Back on the Spanish War, 1942) % ``I'm sure tourists would leave Somalia alive and I'm hopeful they wouldn't be kidnapped. At least, we would try to make sure they were not kidnapped, although it can happen.'' (Somalia's Minister of Tourism, Abdi Jimale Osman) % ``Even the horse is a bit wooden'' (Jenny McCartney; headline on review of the film `Troy') % Vote, n., the instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. (Bierce) % ``And so the `secret unlock code' during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at 00000000.'' (Bruce Blair outlines the compromise between security and convenience chosen by Strategic Air Command for its nuclear missiles) % ``Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.'' (Mark Twain) % ``Now is the winter of our discount tents.'' (advertisement, supposedly seen in a camping-supplies store during a sale) % `... the ``Magic Kingdom'', where the Religious Police ensure that everything remains as it was in the Middle Ages.' (description of Saudi Arabia, seen on the internet) % ``Dear Mr. Gadaffi, You must be very proud. It's not every day that a duck becomes president.'' (from `I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue') % ``... she cattily remarks in the book that the Bin Ladens have no taste in interior decor, all gold taps and terrible paintings....'' (The Guardian reviews Carmen bin Ladin's book) % `A London Underground spokesman said, ``A lot of the suggestions involved passengers entering the Tube in various states of undress''.' (The Times, on thermodynamics) % ``Our Belgian buns are not imported.'' (sign, in bakery, Norfolk) % ``I have it on excellent authority that small kittens have done literally dozens of impossibly cute things in Iraq, yesterday alone. But are we going to read about that in the so-called paper of record?'' (Belle Waring discusses the media's emphasis on the negative) % ``Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.'' (George Bush sums up his presidency) % Otis Crenshaw: You sex limpets? For a living? How do you do that...? Audience member: Well, you have to kill them.... It is a bit harsh. Otis Crenshaw: Harsh?! You're a fucking limpet sex-murderer! (from an Edinburgh Fringe show) % ``In the US, we have a saying: The customer... might have a gun!'' (Reginald D Hunter, on customer service) % ``Electronic voting is one of those things like unguarded plutonium stores in Russia: people are only calm about it because they don't know about it. The rational, informed response would be to run around in circles, howling.'' (Harry Hutton, on the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum) % ```They want only to look at nude pictures, go to football matches, have a few pints and go to sleep.'' This is not an ignorant ill-informed caricature; it is actually quite accurate, and the only riposte I can think of is that it beats blowing yourself up.' (Harry Hutton, on Abu Hamza on the English) % ``I've done made a deal with the devil. He said he's going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there, if I go there, so I won't put all the fires out.'' (Paul `Red' Adair, on death) % ``If you see a naked madman running through your village at night, make sure you get dressed before chasing him.'' (supposedly an ancient African saying, quoted by Tony Benn) % ``Each zygote becomes an elongated ookinete which bores through the wall of the mosquito's stomach and becomes a thick-walled oocyst on the outside. Perhaps mosquitoes also feel ill at this stage.'' (Irene Ridge, in `Introduction to Diversity') % ``Mr. Blair acts like a man who has set his own hair on fire and is trying to put it out using a hammer.'' (Veronica Chapman, on Iraq) % ``When people are denouncing him for crimes against humanity it often gets overlooked that he gave me a coffee machine.'' (Harry Hutton, on Yasser Arafat) % ``That's the thing about the Internet: unless you're actually looking at them, you can't hear anybody screaming.'' (Miles Martin) % ``Cabbage-- the opinions of taxi drivers.'' (new definitions, from `I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue') % ``A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.'' (Herm Albright) % ``The fifties was a long time, especially if you were writing comedy, or had your bollocks caught in a vice.'' (Martin Keegan) % ``... their old car. You know, the one they call `The Envy of Sisyphus', because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it.'' (Saki, from `Tobermory') % Man: How was your flight, sir? Prince Philip: Have you ever been on an aeroplane? Man: Yes. Prince Philip: Well, it was like that. % ``DO YOU HAVE A PARTNER? By partner we mean someone you habitually lie to, apart from us.'' (application form, from the `Department of Social Scrutiny') % ``Richard Nixon... comes off as perhaps the only intelligent American in the book. His own CIA... thought that [Castro] was anti-Communist. Nixon met with Castro, however, and reported to Eisenhower that Castro was in fact a Communist.'' (Greenspun on J L Anderson's biography of Che Guevara) % ``It is hard to be pessimistic about an ageing population when your main source of employment is singing at funerals.'' (Reuben Thomas) % ``Should not the Society of Indexers be known as Indexers, Society of, The?'' (Keith Waterhouse) % `I would write a book entitled ``Everything I Know I Learned At A Very Expensive University'', but I doubt it would sell.' (Daniel Davies) % ``A corporation only needs to be competent in aggregate; that is their genius. They are inevitably made up of incompetents.'' (Francis Irving) % ``The problem isn't mocking the crazies; the problem is we started taking them seriously.'' (Chris Mastrangelo, on the US Republicans) % ``It's good to live by the sea, because that way the idiots are only on three sides of you.'' (George Carlin) % ``It was a time of happy, shiny people. The shiniest were in the uranium mines.'' (caption on postcard sold by the Museum of Communism in Prague) % ``Space may be the final frontier \ But it's made in a Hollywood basement'' (the Red Hot Chili Peppers) % ``[You] couldn't get a ticket for love nor money.... Although, actually, I can't be sure of this since I only really offered money.'' (Daniel Davies) % ``Government incompetence [is] one of the UK's most important safeguards against totalitarianism.'' (John Lettice) % ``I like Reagan. He believes in God. He's helping us. He's better than the others.'' (Osama bin Laden) % ``A pirate might make you walk the plank, but only a parser would make you walk the whole tree.'' (Leonard Richardson) % ``Ashford Skiing Club is cancelled this evening due to the snow.'' (allegedly heard on local radio in Kent) % ``I dissect fruit fly heads for a living. How hard can kneecapping a mouse be?'' (pest-control solutions, as seen on the internet) % ``Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.'' (Ernest Benn) % ``Well, we are now to have a man called Mr John Smith. When his name was put up, Esher said, `Well, it's a good thing to have a proletarian name on the Committee -- anybody know the man?' `Yes', said Lord Euston, `he is my brother-in-law'.'' (Harold Nicolson, describing a National Trust committee) % ``Nothing so gives the illusion of intelligence as personal association with large sums of money.'' (John Kenneth Galbraith) % ``[The Home Secretary] is aware that Iraq, and in particular the Iraqi security forces, would only convict and sentence a person in the courts with the provision of proper jurisdiction.'' (Jack Straw gets to grips with the Iraqi régime: letter rejecting an asylum seeker's appeal, January 2001) % `When elected, our MP will go to the Antarctic, stand in front of the icebergs and shout, ``Stop melting you big, white bastards''. It's more than Bush and Blair are doing.' (2005 manifesto of the Church of the Militant Elvis Party) % ``Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.'' (Winston Churchill) % `Or, as one civilian later remembered, he could tell even from the official news reports that Germany was losing the war because ``the victories kept getting closer''.' (covert channels in propaganda: as seen on the internet) % ``Church parking only -- violators will be baptised'' (seen in the United States) % ``I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure'' (Clarence Darrow) % ``What was the bomb? Why did they call it the bomb, as if there were only one in stock?'' (Stephen Zanichkowsky pondering the imponderable) % ``It's not our fault we have to grab your crotch to make sure your balls aren't made of plastic explosives -- the government made us do it!'' (Colin Teubner summarises a security notice at Heathrow Airport) % ``[To] call this novel formulaic is an insult to the beauty and diversity of formulae.'' (Geoff Pullum reviews a Dan Brown novel) % ``If you are being chased by a police dog, don't try to get away by crawling through a tunnel, going onto a little see-saw, and jumping through a hoop of fire.'' (from `The Law West of Ealing Broadway') % ``We are not knocking down doors at four in the morning with people booted and suited in riot gear. Most of the removals occur around half-five, half-six, seven in the morning.'' (Tony McNulty denies reports of `dawn raids' on asylum seekers) %