Maybe it's my fault.
Maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn't.
Maybe made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym.
Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner.
That my game was built on flash, and not fire.
Maybe it's my fault that that you didn't see that failure gave me strength;
That my pain gave my motivation.
Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for... every single day of my life.
Maybe I destroyed the game.
Or maybe... your just making excuses.
-- Michael Jordan
Q: You get tagged angry a lot. Do you feel angry?
A: Anyone who's been around me for any length of time knows I'm not an angry person. I don't live with anger. I don't have grudges. I've never been in a fight. But what they read as anger is a heightened theatrical version of a combination of things being sort of disappointed and contemptuous of the choices humans have made. ...
It's an irritation. It's an impatience. It's a dissatisfaction with things as they are as engineered by man. It all sounds too grand when we talk about it like this. It's only stand-up comedy. But there is a sort of art form to it. And it is rhetoric and rhetoric does go to extremes of expression. I guess people sometimes make the easy choice and say, "He's angry." ... See, the thing is, I don't experience it as anger. I may report it as anger. But I don't experience it that way. -- Lewis Black, comedian
It is something that lawyers would call the doctrine of "res ipsa loquitur" -- the thing speaks for itself. As Henry Thoreau said, "That's when we found a trout in your milk." It did not breed and generate from the milk, somebody put it there.
A great people have been moved to defend a great nation . . . We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them -- President George W. Bush, 7:30pm CST September 11, 2001
We have awakened a sleeping giant and instilled in it a terrible resolve. -- Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
. . . from that day forward she lived happily ever after. Except for the dying at the end. And the heartbreak in between. -- Lucius Shepard
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma --Winston Churchill, in a radio address on October 1, 1939, describing Russia
Don't start with a character that needs a story. Start with an idea that needs characters to express it. -- Tom Stoppard, playwright
While your work has turns, corners, characters and plot, you must still interest people. And they don't have to appreciate it. You will hit some people dead center. And miss others altogether -- Tom Stoppard, playwright
If you have a point, I suggest you sharpen it. -- Frank Durda IV, ISP support
A child is a potential hero. -- anon
Weddings are one of the last rituals that you go through. And rituals are meant to be difficult and to create and signify change. -- anon
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level... Then, they'll beat you with experience.
--Jack Coleman-Levy, UIC, Quartz Hill Little League, Quartz Hill, CA (D51)
It's just so damn hard to do, 'cause you expect them to stop when they
are made to look like an idiot. But they ARE an idiot. That's how
they ALWAYS look. So they don't know to stop.
I'd like to buy that guy for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth.
--Oliver M. B. Cutchen, my grandfather
Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.
--M. Thatcher.
I've never seen a test for VP, but judging from history, if we had one, anyone could pass it.
--William J. Bennett responding to Jesse Jackson in a debate over choosing best qualified candidates vs affirmative action. Jackson asked if Quayle was the best candidate for VP
Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There has to be the will to produce a superior thing.
--Paul Russell, pres. Gullwing Service Company
To get the goods on someone, you need to already have the goods on them.
--Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner
It violates the Rule of Holes... When you're in a hole, quit digging.
--George Will on why Cuomo (NE Liberal Democrat) should not run for pres. in '92.
What Bill Clinton demonstrated in Arkansas was that he would take the path of environmental protection where that path was open. We're going to have to open the path for this administration. When you're trying to be in a leadership position, you have to be more strategic, you have to sometimes be more patient, and you frequently have to be quiet. This may be our last and best chance to make all of this happen, and it is very important that we be extremely disciplined, extremely strategic, and extremely thoughtful.'
--Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club, on the Clinton Administration, 1/93
If I bought groceries the way I buy health insurance, I'd eat a lot better... and so would my dog.'
--Tx Senator Phil Gramm on health care,
Tap your foot...
--Count Basie, asked to describe his music.
If there is a God, He will not be rocked on his throne by a book or a poem. He is bigger than that. If there is not a God, then there is no issue.
--S. Rushde on why there is no such thing as blasphemy.
His arguments add nothing to the debate except a sensation of nausea
--Excerpt from a letter to the editor, Scientific American,
First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.
--Richard Feynman on how to look for a new law of physics. NOVA: "The Best Mind Since Einstein"
I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence
--Richard P Feynman.
It has become the victim of the revenge of the C students.
--Roy Schwitters, director of the cancelled superconducting super collider.
Football combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
--George Will
If government seeks to use clandestine and furtive methods to monitor citizen actions, it can ill afford to complain should the citizen insist on a method to effect his right to know he is under such surveillance
--Judge Joseph Ryan, Superior Court, District of Columbia
Democrats spend, spend, spend. On the other hand, Republicans spend, spend, spend and then say they feel bad about it.
--John Sharp, Texas Controller, Conservative Democrat
Imagine you are a congressman. Now, imagine you are an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself...
--Mark Twain
No matter how cynical you get, you can't keep up.
--Lilly Tomlin
When someone says to me, "You don't sound like you're from Texas!" I respond, "Aint that funny 'cause you don't look like you're stupid." Usually, they don't get it.
--Leslie Cutchen
Proof by assertion will not work. You may continue to repeat yourself ad infinitum, but until you construct reasoned arguments to defend your vacuous assertions, you're just making so much wind.
--Larry Wall, Internet
I'm pleased God made my skin black. I wish He had made it thicker.
--Curt Flood (7 gold gloves, 3x all star. Pioneer in breaking the color barrier and MLB reserve clause.)
You couldn't get a clue during clue-mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
--Jeff Preston (al919@yfn.ysu.edu)
People tend to resist that which is forced upon them. People tend to support that which they help to create.
--Vince Pfaff
Government is the coming together of people to do for themselves collectively what they could not do as well or at all individually
--Abraham Lincoln as related by Mario Cuomo, _Meet The Press_, March 5, 1995
Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep.
--A Dennis Healy, said of Sir Geoffrey Howe, during U.K. parliamentary debate
People practice what they're already good at
--Pete Rose
Freedom doesn't mean the opportunity to do what we want. It means the responsibility to do what we ought.
--Pope John Paul II
If the unarmed sally forth into battle, their blood is on their own hands
--Usenet guy on flaming a lamer
Character - Everybody has a hard time defining it. It's easy. Character is doing what is right when nobody's looking.
--Congressman J.C. Watts, Ok, 1996 Rep Convention Keynote Address
Along these same lines:
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.--Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (1800-1859)
Doing the wrong thing less expensively is not much help. --Peter Drucker, via John Roberts; BDO II value engineering
Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast. --Peter Drucker
DO or DO NOT. There is no TRY
--Yoda
Some have said that I'm the only one who respects you. But I told them they were wrong...
--Dogbert to Ratbert
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you're going to get.
--Dilbert rules of management
If I were in the President's place I would not get a chance to resign. I would be lying in a pool of my own blood hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, "How do I reload this damn thing?"
-- Congressman Dick Armey, Tx, asked "Were you in President Clinton's place, would you resign?"