Some favourite quips

Assembled herein a randomly ordered random selection of some of the better entries in the "fortune" database

Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away. -- Anon.

Truth is never pure and rarely simple. -- Oscar Wilde

A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours. -- Anon.

A closed mouth gathers no foot. -- Anon.

A computer, to print out a fact, Will divide, multiply, and subtract. But this output can be No more than debris, If the input was short of exact. -- Gigo

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

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James

A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work. -- Anatol Holt

A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. Anon.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space. -- Gloria Steinem

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. -- George Wald

A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author. -- S. C. Johnson

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. -- Marshall Lumsden

The purpose of power is power. -- George Orwell

We trained hard - but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be re-organised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation. -- Gaius Petronius A.D. 74.

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. --Fred Brooks

When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen. -- Kai Lung

To succeed, planning is not enough. One must improvise as well. -- Hari Seldon

It pays to be obvious, especially when one has a reputation for being subtle. -- Hari Seldon

The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. -- George Mikes

Furious activity is no substitute for progress. -- Anon.

"The sign of a decadent organization is an overweight manual of procedures!" -- Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. -- Anon.

Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late project makes it later. -- Fred Brooks

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." -- Anon.

Documentation is the castor oil of programming. The managers know it must be good, because programmers hate it so much. -- Weinberg

The First Law of Maintenance: If it happens, it must be possible. -- Anon.

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week. --W.D. Howells

No problem is simple until it's solved. Anon.

One man's mean is another man's Poisson. -- Anon.

Men freely believe that what they wish to desire. --Julius Caesar

The expert is a person who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. -- Anon.

In the Tipperary Games this afternoon both teams in the final of the tug of war were disqualified for pushing. -- Anon.

Users don't know what they want until they see what they get. -- Anon.

You don't need to be well to be wealthy, But you've got to be whole to be holy. -- Greg Lake

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. -- Olin Miller

To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is more difficult to criticize the competent. -- Anon.

Truth does not triumph. It simply remains when everything else has been squandered. -- Ludvik Vaculik

Some people think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold. -- Anon.

The systems designer suffers because the better his system does its job, the less its users know of its existence. -- Weinberg

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation: "... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws." -- Douglas Adams

The moving cursor writes, and having writ, blinks on. -- Anon.

A bore is a man who talks so much about himself that you can't talk about yourself. -- Anon.

"The Hon. Member disagrees. I can hear him shaking his head." -- Pierre Trudeau

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well. -- Anon.