"The committee is here to protect the student. We work for the department, not for the advisor." - TRG, 22 March 1999 "I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of." [Clarence Darrow] "Never attribute to Devil-worshipping conspiracies what opportunism, emotional instability, and religious bigotry are sufficient to explain." [Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.] "The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them." [Joseph Campbell] "Mom and dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it." [Calvin & Hobbes] "Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers." [Bruce Calvert] "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." John Buchan (1875-1940) "Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends." [Woody Allen] "Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on." [Anonymous] "Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition." [Isaac Asimov] "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." [Francis Bacon] "It hurts to set you free But you'll never follow me The end of laughter and soft lies The end of nights we tried to die" - The End, The Doors "Everybody knows the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows that the good guys lost Everybody knows that the fight is fixed The poor stay poor and the rich get rich That's how it goes " - Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen "The further I get from the things that I care about, The less I care about how much further away I get." (Robert Smith 1989) "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art ... It has no survival value: rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." --C.S. Lewis "The government struggled to define what 'indecency' was... The government hasd a porn expert -- yes, we pay taxes for a porn expert -- who testified during the trial" - Chris Hansen, ACLU attorney "In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all the others all she loves is love." Lord Byron, "Don Juan" "The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world." -- Brain Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress................But I repeat myself. - Mark Twain "Time's fun when you're having flies." - Kermit the Frog Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. - Oscar Wilde I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. - A. Whitney Brown Practially every one of the top 40 records being played on every radio station in the United States is a communication to the children to take a trip, to cop out, to groove. The psychedelic jackets on the record albums have their own hidden symbols and messages as well as the lyrics to all the top rock songs and they all sing the same refrain: It's fun to take a trip, put acid in your veins. "Supernaut" by black Sabbath "That woman, as nature has created her, and as man at present is educating her, is man's enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he and is his equal in education and work. At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you understand? The moral of the tale is this: Whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped" - Leopold von Sacher Masoch, "Venus in Furs" "You know what I am," she replied, coldly. "I am a woman of stone, Venus in Furs, your ideal, kneel down and pray to me." - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, "Venus in Furs" "The beasts of passion must be confronted, and the laws of nature understood. Conflict cannot be avoided, but perhaps can be confined to a mental theatre. In the imperial arean, there is no law but imagination" - Camille Paglia "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons" --Popular Mechanics, 1949 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" --Thomas Watson. Chairman of IBM, 1943 "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and walked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year" --Business Editor at Prentice Hall, 1957 "But what...is it good for?" (referring to the microchip) --IBM engineer, 1968 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home" --Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment, 1977 "640K ought to be enough for anybody" --Bill Gates, 1981 "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." - Francis Bacon's statement of an old saying as quoted in "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi "Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...." - Carl Zwanzig "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein Every time I see your face I think of things unpure unchaste I want to fuck you like a dog I'll take you home and make you like it -Liz Phair, excerpt from "Flower" I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn't last long. - Shelley Winters What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate's sultry. - Lord Byron A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view. - Sophia Loren "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim ." --E. W. Dijkstra I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep, she dremt life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift - In the one hand love, in the other freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose." And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom." And life said "Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said "love" I would have given thee that thou didst ask for: and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand." I heard the woman laugh in her sleep. -- Olive Schreiner "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers...choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing junk food in your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose Life...But why would I want to do a thing like that?" --Mark Renton "And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing besides remains." -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias "As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from government intrusion." - Judge Stewart Dalzell "Me? I'm not mad at any women reporters. But TV stations think I'm a sucker for women and always send pretty reporters." --Ichiro Suzuki, Orix Blue Wave star, who allegedly made a female reporter cry when she asked him questions about his performance this coming year "Say, on your way home tonight, could you stop off and buy me one of those Internets?" --A father who is into new gadgets, to his banker son on the phone "Periodically, I hold electronic town meetings in which a number of Vermonters at different sites in Vermont ask me questions and discuss issues online. Participants in these town meetings have included college students and may have included, or will in the future include, minors. I have no control over the language used by the participants to express themselves during these electronic town meetings than I would at a town meeting where we were all physically present in one location." - Sen. Leahy, CDA Court Appeal "Incorrectly instrumented kernels are almost impossible to debug. The best strategy is to not make mistakes." - ATOM Kernel Instrumentation Guide v0.4 (A. Euastace & B.Chen) "Kill a few people and you're a murderer, Kill a few million and you're a conquerer" - from the .plan of James Wang We are proud that there are many vending machines of soft-drinks along the street, because it's a barometer of public peace. - unnamed Japanese Company I want all the books on the shelves. I want the books with dinosaur words like "nigger" that show the skeletons in our national closet. I want books with the word "cunt" as well as the word "kike". Words don't scare me. Suppressing them does. -- Elaine L. Konigsburg (MM '52), former chemist, noted author of children's books, and one of five honorary inductees in CMU's Phi Beta Kappa in 1995. "If you can't say 'fuck,', you can't say 'fuck the government.'" --Lenny Bruce "Delusional reasoning is an important part of day to day life" "I refused to have a battle of wits with someone who is unarmed" - ??? "We're academics. There is One True Answer" - Garth Gibson "We are in violent agreement" - someone at a NASD meeting "The metaphor is the mask of God through which eternity is to be experienced" - Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth" "As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all" - excerpt from a letter from Chief Seattle to the President of the United States in response to an inquiry about buying tribal lands "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favour fire." -Robert Frost "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." - Roy Batty, "Blade Runner" "Cyberpunk is America's conceptual nightmare on the brink of a new century, a savage experiment in social Darwinism, where God is a bored lab worker with his thumb permanently on technology's fast forward button." - W. Gibson "The Blind have been blessed with security" - Trent Reznor "Is this true or only clever?" - Augustine Birrell "...some starry eyed individuals who access the Net think of Cyberspace as a community, with rules, regulations and codes of behaviour. Don't you believe it! There is no community. Perhaps there was some truth in that concept in the past, when the Internet was used exclusively by a small, homogeneous group of academics and corporate technical researchers. Today, with Internet access available to everyone, Iway travellers reflect every heterogeneous nuance of the world population. Along your journey, someone may try to tell you that in order to be a good Net "citizen", you must follow the rules of the Cyberspace community. Don't listen. The only laws and rules with which you should concern yourself are those passed by the country, state and city in which you live. The only ethics you should adopt as you pursue wealth on the Iway are those dictated by the religious faith you have chosen to follow and your own good conscience." - Laurence Canter & Martha Siegel ("the Green Card Lawyers"), from an early review copy of their book, _How_To_Make_a_Fortune_on_the_Information_ _Superhighway_, 1994. "Any time you throw information from the Internet at a student, you have to filter it." - Steve Shotwell, director of computer services for the Troy, Michigan school district. "Trying to control information in the network age is about as successful as pissing into the wind." - Keith Henson, in an article on the AABBS prosecution, Computer Underground Digest, Jan. 21, 1995. "A means of control should exist whereby access operators and their organizations are held responsible for what is posted on the Internet," - Church of Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin "If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." - Thomas Jefferson "I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. `Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting." - Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich on the de-funding of the Public Broadcasting System, as quoted by _Broadcasting_and_Cable_, Feb. 20, 1995, p. 8 "The Internet is a conduit of criminal activity." - James P. Lennane, president of software company DeScribe Inc., who in Oct. 1994 offered a $20,000 reward for the turning in of certain software pirates, whom Microsoft also offered a $10,000 bounty on. "First of all, you have to make the distinction between the Internet and some commercial service like AOL or Prodigy. If you spend that time and money building internets, you at the end of your labors will own tangible assets: hardware, software, paid-for network bandwidth, and human capital in the form of people who know how to run same. Spending those dimes on Prodigy means that in the end you will have rented someone else's assets and will have nothing concrete in the end except for receipts for bills paid." - Edward Vielmetti of MSEN "That will change over time the entire flow of information and the entire quality of knowledge in the country and it will change the way people will try to play games in the legislative process." - Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, on increasing public electronic access to Congressional Information (as reported by _BNA_Daily_Report_for_Executives_, Nov. 22, 1994) "John [Malone, of cable tv giant TCI] and I were just on a Networked Economy Conference panel together, and we were standing at the urinals talking about things, and Barry Diller comes in and stands between us. And Barry says, `C'mon, you seem like such good friends. Just split the difference.'" - Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, on the failed BA/TCI "NII" merger, reported in _Wired_, Feb. 1995, p. 110 "...Don't mistake any of this for altruism...Fear and greed just doesn't work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better." - Larry Edison, CEO of Oracle, on the company's improved customer service; reported in _Investor's_Business_Daily_, Feb. 22, 1995, p. A2 "Networks are based on choice. When they get uncomfortable, it's easy to opt out of them. Communities teach tolerance, co-existence, and mutual respect...I fear that calling a network a community leads people to complacency and delusion, to accepting an inadequate substitute because they've never experienced the real thing and they don't know what they're missing." - Eric Utne, publisher of _Utne_Reader_, from _Utne_Reader_, Mar.-Apr. 1995, p. 3 "If I knew what you've made during the year, if I know what your withholding is, if I know what your spending pattern is, I should be able to generate for you a tax return. I am an excellent advocate of return-free filing. We know everything about you that we need to know. Your employer tells us everything about you that we need to know. Your activity records on your credit cards tell us everything about you that we need to know. Through interface with Social Security, with the DMV, with your banking institutions, we really have a lot of information ... We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we'd like to go to." - US Internal Revenue Service Document Processing System project manager, as reported by _Wired_, Dec. 1994, p. 174. "I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation." - Founder of ClariNet Communications Corp., _Internet_World_, Nov/Dec. 1994, p.64) "E-mail someday will unite us all in a shared state of epistolary bliss. E-mail is ethereal; it consumes no paper, no ink, and only a misting of fossil fuels. E-mail is nearly instantaneous. Best of all, e-mail combines the vacuity of phone talk with the potential permanence of letters. A fledgling still, e-mail promises to burgeon beyond anyone's calculation. Maybe the letter's golden age isn't dead after all; it may be yet to come." - an op-ed piece in the Nov. 9, 1994 _Wall_Street_Journal_ "Laws do not persuade just because they threaten." - Seneca, 65 CE "Nothing we do in this great capital can change the fact that factories or information can flash across the world, that people can move money around in the blink of an eye...Nothing can change the fact that technology can be adopted, once created, by people all across the world and then rapidly adapted in new and different ways by people who have a little different take on the way that technology works." - William Clinton, President of the United States, in a _New_York_Times_ article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993 [Note how inconsistent this statement is with the Clinton Administration's policy efforts to stuff the encryption genie back in the bottle.] "The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously." - Hubert H. Humphrey "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." - Gene Spafford, 1992, quoted in a Joel Snyder article in _Internet_World_, Nov/Dec 1994, p.94 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, _Historical_Review_of_Pennsylvania_, 1759. "Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." - Lily Tomlin "Any vagabond babbler or unacknowledged genius, any enterprising tradesman, with his own money or with the money of others, may found a newspaper, even a great newspaper. He may attract a host of writers, ready to deliver judgment on any subject at a moment's notice; he may hire illiterate reporters to keep him supplied with rumors and scandals. His staff is then complete. From that day he sits in judgement on all the world, on ministers and administrators, on literature and art, on finance and industry." - K.P. Pobyedonostseff, _Reflections_of_a_Russian_Statesman_ (tr. Robert Long) "I'd rather have 10% of the world than 100% of New England." - President of Nynex, the New England local telephone monopoly, on telecom deregulation, as reported in _Business_Week_, Feb. 20, 1995, p. 92 "If you think the 13,000 guys at Microsoft who aren't millionaires yet are going to show some restraint, you're in for a surprise." - Andy Nicholson of Microsoft, in response to America On-Line CEO Steve Case's comment that Microsoft should show some restraint in the online market. "If I have a market in the U.S., I have 200 to 250 million guys all speaking the same language, all paying in dollars, and all reading the same magazines. The natural hub of the industry is the United States. Whether the Japanese or the Europeans like to hear this or not, it's the truth." - Expatriate Belgian CEO of TechGnosis, a software company now based in the US. "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "There is a First Amendment right to speak in a encrypted way...The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo. The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand." - Eben Moglen, Columbia U. professor of law and legal history, in a _New_York_Times_ article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993 "The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Cyberspace still exists at the pleasure of the real world." - Esther Dyson, EFF Boardmember, from Jan. 14. 1994 _Economist_ article "Grassroots can grow through concrete." - Jim DePoe , as quoted in Jim Warren's _GovAccess_ e-newsletter. "Philosophical habits of mind do not come quicker through fiber optics. Clear thinking is not aided by better dot resolution. Understanding ourselves and feeling for others does not come with a software upgrade." - Linda Ray Pratt "When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us." - Alexander Graham Bell "[R]espondents [to an Internet survey] reported a more active civic life in cyberspace than is typically reported by respondents in the national election studies (NES) of Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan. Even though the technology is new, close to one-third had used e-mail to contact a public official. This compares to an estimated 28 percent of the NES who reported ever having written a letter to a public official during the 1960 and 70s...About 60 percent had been asked to petition or otherwise contact a public official about an issue or public policy." - Bonnie Fisher, Michael Margolis, David Resnick, "Democracy on the Internet" Survey Results, as presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in New York City, Sept. 1-4, 1994 "Knowledge of history is the precondition of political intelligence. Without history, a society shares no common memory of where it has been [or] what it core values are." - 'National Standards for United States History' as reprinted in _Time_, Nov. 7, 1994 "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater "When you are confronted by any complex social system, such as an urban center or a hamster, with things about it that you're dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping...Jay Forrester has demonstrated it mathematically, with his computer models of cities in which he makes clear that whatever you propose to do, based on common sense, will almost inevitably make matters worse rather than better. You cannot meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous events that you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts. If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand, in detail, the whole system, and for very large systems you can't do this without a very large computer. Even then, the safest course seems to be to stand by and wring hands, but not to touch...Intervening is a way of causing trouble." - Lewis Thomas, from the essay "On Meddling", _The_Medusa_and_the_Snail_, Viking Pr., New York, 1979 "I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my freind, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." - E. M. Forster "One practice which I believe should be eliminated is that of the so-called 'paper front'. A client is advised to finance an 'organization' to promote or fight for its cause under the guise of an independent and spontaneous movement. This is a plain public deceit and fraud...Attempts to fool the public by making it believe an 'organization' existing only on paper is really a vociferous group favoring this or that cause have helped to cast a shadow upon the business of public relations counseling." - John W. Hill, _The_Making_of_a_Public_Relations_Man_ "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery!?" - Patrick Henry "The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human." - John Naisbitt & Patricia Aburdene, _Megatrends_2000_ "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", _TIME_, Mar. 14 1994 [note: these statistics have since been called into question. Even so, they are unlikely to be off by very MUCH...] "Many thanks to those of you who flamed the PC [Progressive Conservative party] pranksters. I know when I went online that I would have to deal with fake posts and related chaff. That's the price of being on the Net. I'm not about to delete my account. I still want to hear from people with *real* concerns and *real* suggestions". - Robert Rae, Premier of Ontario, Canada, in a post to the Usenet newsgroup ont.general, thanking supporters for verbally attacking PC party leader Mike Harris, who referred to an obviously forged message from a fake Bob Rae as an embarassing "security violation" and the forgers themselves. From a K.K. Campbell article in _eye_Weekly_. [If major figures of government are encouraging flaming, netiquette still has a long way to go...] "Time makes more converts than reason." - Thomas Paine "A Gallup poll reveals nearly 85% of Canadians worry the info-highway will be a threat to their privacy, but 54.9% are still willing to pay up to $15 monthly to be hooked into it. The info-highway received a 54% recognition rating, a figure described as "astounding" by Anderson Consulting, which sponsored the survey. 58.7% were interested in educational services, but only 21.3% in home shopping and 16.4% in calling up video games." - _Toronto_Globe_&_Mail_, "Snoopophobia Haunts Info-Highway" May 3, 1994 "Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to buy a laptop. Now, maybe that's wrong, maybe that's expensive, maybe we can't do it, but I'll tell you, any signal that we can send to the poorest Americans that says, 'We're going into a 21st century, third-wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with us.'" - Rep. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives addressing the House Ways and Means Committee, Jan. 1995. [From _New_York_Times_, Jan. 5, 1995, excerpted in _Edupage_, Jan. 8, 1995.] "Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds." - John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder, _Decrypting_the_Puzzle_Palace_ "Only through intelligent utilization of interactive multimedia technology can we make higher education simultaneously more productive and more efficient." - Bernard Gifford, software entrepreneur, quoted in _Educom_Review_, Nov./ Dec., 1994 "California legislators consider 10 to 15 letters and faxes to be a *strong* showing of support for a bill (in a state of 31-million population!)" - Jim Warren, _GovAccess_ Internet newsletter, 08/04/94 "It is almost impossible for anyone outside this damn beltway to really understand how the Congress works. If you aren't here, walking the halls of Congress, sitting at bars and attending parties where you get to knock back some brews with Hill staffers, you don't have a handle on the almost numbing amount of bullshit that goes on." - _CWD_ and _Comm_Daily_ journalist Brock Meeks, post to com-priv mailing list forum, 10/22/94 "'If you want me to tell you that our money buys us a vote on a particular bill at a particular time, I say: `Fuck You,` it doesn't,' according to a prominent lobbyist for one of the regional telephone companies. "'However, if you ask me, `Do we get better access because of a couple of $1,000 checks?` I'll guarantee you that two grand gets us in the door and gets our telephone calls returned before Joe Blow from the home office,' he said. 'And it sure as hell gets our calls returned before yours.'" - Brock Meeks, _CyberWire_Dispatch_, 2nd issue of 11/08/94 "There are at least four big barriers to the NII. One is outdated and compartmentalized regulations governing telecommunication, cable broadcasting, and information industries. Another is legal issues concerning copyright, intellectual property, and security. The third is standards and the interoperability of the various NII technologies. And the last is the development of new structures for commerce and business activities on the NII, including billing and payment for services rendered," - president of WilTel, Inc., as reported in _Telecommunications_, Nov. 1994, p. 29 "It's amazing where capitalism has boomed in the last couple of years. First the Eastern Bloc, and now the last bastion of socialism -- the Internet itself." - the Chairman of Delphi Internet Services Corp., as reported by _Information_Week_, 10/24/94 "E-mail is reincarnating the age of letter writing. We're keeping in touch the way the Victorians did, building a personal community connected by a constant stream of letters sharing news and gossip. E-mail is reviving the 'letter' as a forum for wit, style, and personality, as well as serving as an invaluable business tool." - Leslie Schroeder, Silicon Valley PR consultant to high-tech companies, from _Computer_underground_Digest interview by David Batterson, Oct. 1994 "Every advance in civilization has been denounced while it was still recent." - Bertrand Russell "[If] America's tv and movie producers are unwilling to clean up their act... when it comes to sex, bloodshed and violence in their programming... the government stands ready to step in." - Attorney-General Janet Reno at a 1993 Senate hearing on tv violence, as reported by a UPI radio report. [One is tempted to ask what the difference between 'bloodshed' and 'violence' is...] "Not all dinosaurs roll over and die. Some of 'em can run real fast and bite the hell out of you." - a Meridian Bancorp senior vice president on banking industry's plans to prevent Microsoft's online services from cutting into their industry. From _Business_Week_, 10/31/94. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke "If five years from now we [the FBI] solve the access problem, but what we're hearing is all encrypted, I'll probably, if I'm still here, be talking about that in a very different way: the objective is the same. The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeros. Whoever they are, whatever they are, I need them." - FBI Director Louis Freeh, clarifying statements that the FBI may seek legislation to ban strong encryption, in an Sept. 1994 Q&A session, from a WELL article by Steven Levy. "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." - Mitch Ratcliffe, _Technology Review_, April, 1992 "People need to buy and want to. The selling itself becomes the entertainment, the sought-after good... In the Internet world there won't be any other way to peddle. To be successful advertising itself will have to supply real value to the consumer." - Peter Huber, telecommunication attorney, quoted in _Forbes_, 12/19/94 "It's kind of the digital equivalent of a drive-by shooting." - a Texas A&M U. professor whose email account was abused by crackers who publicly posted racist remarks from the account, resulting in hatemail (including death threats) being sent to the professor. (Reported by _Atlanta_Journal_Constitution_, 10/19/94) "The hottest news in computing today is online communications, and there's no end in sight to the impact this will have on virtually every segment of the American public." - Practical Peripherals president Jack Murphy, from _Computer_underground_ _Digest_ interview by David Batterson, Oct. 1994. Batterson comments: "Irontically, Murphy's remarks were faxed to me, not e-mailed." "The net poses a fundamental threat not only to the authority of the government, but to all authority, because it permits people to organize, think, and influence one another without any institutional supervision whatsoever. The government is responding to this threat with the Clipper Chip...The obvious danger in supplying people with encryption is that encryption makes it easier to keep secrets, which makes it easier for people to commit crimes. With powerful encryption, the net would become an ideal place for criminals to organize conspiracies." - John Seabrook, "My First Flame", _New_Yorker_ 06/06/94 "It [the 'set-top box'] will allow us to control all the communication needs of a household with one device." - John Mallone, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) C.E.O. "Taxpayers have spent more than $200 billion in the last decade on computer systems that are antiquated, incompatible, and not doing the job." - Sen. William Cohen (R-Maine), on misappropriations for, and misuse of obsolete computer systems by government agencies (from _Information_ _Week_, 10/24/94). Ever get the feeling the govt. is differently clued? "I doubt that Congress would pass on the opportunity to make sure that our children were safe from terrorists." - FBI Director Louis Freeh using one of the main propaganda buggaboos of law enforcement attempts to weaken US privacy rights ("drug dealers", "child pornographers/molestors" and "organized crime" being the other 3 Horsemen of the Big Brother Apocalypse); from House testimony at a hearing on the FBI's Digital Telephony bill, 09/13/94. "The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing power, and more sophisticated techniques used by establishment mass media to falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a priori ridiculous, or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest..." - William S. Burroughs, author (censored by the U.S. government; his comments apply now to the underground e-press as well) "What I believe we lack, as a nation, is something which describes our rights in an information age. I believe that the principles are all there, in our constitution. But I shudder to think what the courts will do to massacre these unless the legislature re-articulates these principles in terms more appropriate to contemporary technology." - Sean McLinden , post to Com-Priv mailing list forum "To some, this is outrageous. To some, this is free speech in action." - Cliff Figallo (former EFF Online Coordinator, and former WELL Director) on the advent of anonymous remailers on the Internet "If the future navigation system [for interactive networked services on the NII] looks like something from Microsoft, it will never work." - the chairman of Walt Disney Television & Telecommunications, at Broadcas- ting & Cable magazine's Superhighway Superpanel (reported by B&C, 10/10/94) "Ask the American public if they want an FBI Wiretax and they'll say 'no.' If you ask them do they want a feature on their phone that helps the FBI find their missing child they'll say, 'Yes.'" - FBI Directory Louis Freeh, on Digital Telephony, US House (Subcmte. on Telecommunications & Finance) hearing on the Digital Telephony bill, 09/13/94). [Considering that the first question is fairly accurate, and the second is a wildly misleading attempt to convert real issues into emotionally charged buzzphrases and grossly inaccurate depictions of how this technology works, Freeh's estimation of the answers is probably correct.] "Describing the Internet as the Network of Networks is like calling the Space Shuttle, a thing that flies" - John Lester of Mass. General Hospital (from his email signature file). "In 1991, the latest year figures are available, most Americans, across all age groups, disapproved when asked the question: 'Everything considered, would you say that you approve or disapprove of wiretapping?' Some 67% of all 18-20 year olds gave the thumbs down, as did 68% of the Gen[eration]-X crowd...Boomers disapproved of wiretapping almost 3-to-1 while 67% of those 50 and over disapproved." - Brock Meeks, "Riding A Straw Horse", _CyberWire_Dispatch_, reporting on innacurate FBI figures presented at House Telecom. & Finance Subcmte. Hearing on Digital Telephony legislation, 09/13/94. "Finally, sometime in the near future--thanks to massive computerization of automobile traffic control--safety on the roads will match the airline safety of today, with relatively few car accidents and deaths per year. It's going to be very exciting..." - David Batterson, "The Online Future", _Computer_underground_Digest_, Oct. 24, 1994 "I believe in markets doing what they do well, which is to develop technology, and letting citizens do what they ideally do well, which is to set policy." - Esther Dyson, opening statements from NII Advisory Council session, 1994. "Frankly, the people probably most interested in having computer lists on disk are junk mail vendors and solicitors." - Karen Hughes, spokesperson for George Bush Jr. (R) Texas gubernatorial campaign, on why Bush refused to follow other candidates in providing online copies of files documenting campaign contributions and expenditures (as reported by _Houston_Chronicle_, 07/21/94). "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion" - Edmund Burke "The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." - James Madison, 4th US President "We were extremely conscious of free speech rights. But they are not absolute." - John E. Palomino, Santa Rosa CA Regional Director, Dept. of Education Office for Civil Rights, on Branham, Arata & Humphrey v. Santa Rosa Junior College case. From "College Settles Harassment Charges Stemming from Computer Conferences", Tamar Lewin, _New_York_Times_, 09/22/94 "Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." - George Orwell, _1984_ "My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson "When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl!" [When cryptography is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy!", ROT-13 encrypted] - Brad Templeton of ClariNet "Wherever the Net arises, there arises also a rebel to resist human control...A network nurtures small failures in order that large failures don't happen as often. It is...fertile ground for learning, adaptation, and evolution...The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen." - Kevin Kelly, _Out_of_Control_ "In order to keep up with the criminals and to protect our national security, the solution is clear: we need legislation to ensure that telephone companies and other carriers provide law enforcement with access to this new technology." - FBI Dir. Louis Freeh, 12/8/93, on hampering new telecom technology to make it easily wiretappable. [Full text of this Dec. 1993 DC Press Club speech available for anonymous ftp as wiretap.speech from ftp.eff.org in /pub/EFF/Privacy/Surveillance/Old/digtel93_freeh.speech] "[Digital Telephony] compared to the Clipper Chip, is relatively benign, but that's like saying cholera is better than the plague." - Carl Rudijerian "The Film, Video, and Publications Act also breached the Bill of Rights and it became law. Parliament is bigger than the Bill of Rights". - New Zealand (Howick) Member of Parliament Trevor Rogers, on Minister of Justice's comments that Rogers' anti-computer-communications bill is unconstitutional. "It's time for a reality check. These products are a little more difficult to develop than people thought." - a Bell Atlantic management official, on NII technology (quoted in _New_York_Times_, 09/09/94). "The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable." - U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977 "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." - Barry Goldwater "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." - Ken Olsen, then president of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 1977. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - Amendment VI, United States Constitution "I used to feel like I was a flea on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now I feel I might be a small yapping poodle on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex." - Phil Zimmerman, on releasing "Pretty Good Privacy" (PGP) "Information wants to be free." - Stewart Brand, EFF boardmember, founder of Whole Earth Catalog and the WELL. (Among others. No telling who really said this first.) "Information wants to be free. Believe it." - Bruce Sterling, author and EFF-Austin boardmember "But programmers and authors want to get paid." - source unknown "Recently, we have witnessed an alarming number of young people who, for a variety of sociological and psychological reasons, have become attached to their computers and are exploiting their potential in a criminal manner. Often, a progression of criminal activity occurs which involves telecommunications fraud (free long distance phone calls), unauthorized access to other computers (whether for profit, fascination, ego, or the intellectual challenge), credit card fraud (cash advances and unauthorized purchases of goods), and then move on to other destructive activities like computer viruses...Our experience shows that many computer hacker suspects are no longer misguided teenagers mischievously playing games with their computers in their bedrooms. Some are now high tech computer operators using computers to engage in unlawful conduct." - Garry M. Jenkins, Asst. Director, U. S. Secret Service "We empower eachother by sharing information...We can create here, together, a society in which everyone has a voice, and everybody's ideas are heard." - Sheila Lennon, "The Global Village is Finally Wired", _Providence_[RI]_Sunday_Journal_, 08/07/94 "Privacy in one's associations ... may in many circumstances be indispensable to freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs." - John M. Harlan, Supreme Court justice, 1958 "Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." - Ayn Rand, _The_Fountainhead_, 1943 "Earlier this month...America Online..shut several feminist discussion forums, saying it was concerned that the subject matter might be inappropriate for young girls who would see the world 'girl' in the forum's headline and 'go in there looking for information about their Barbies,' a spokeswoman said." - Peter H. Lewis, "Censors Become a Force on Cyberspace Frontier", _New_York_Times_, 06/07/94 "It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values -- the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle." - John Updike. _Atlantic_Monthly_, 09/94 "While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student's arithmetic or correct his spelling." - David Gelerntner, Yale U., _New_Republic_, 09/26/94 "Cryptography is an enormously powerful tool that needs to be controlled, just as we control bombs and rockets." - David A. Lytel, President's Office of Science and Technology Policy "Society has recognized over time that certain kinds of scientific inquiry can endanger society as a whole and has applied either directly, or through scientific/ethical constraints, restrictions on the kind and amount of research that can be done in those areas." - Adm. Bobby R. Inman (then CIA Dep. Dir.) in a February, 1982 article for _Aviation_Week_and_Space_Technology_ on why cryptographic research should be limited to government scientists. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that individuals have the right to protect their private communications by any method they choose - without government interference. "You know your country is dying when you have to make a distinction between what is moral and ethical, and what is legal." - John De Armond , _Performance_Engineering_Magazine_, 1994 "This is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower looking down their noses at the people who came over ON THE SECOND BOAT!" - EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor, on Internet-user elitism v. BBS users "Within a cell site, LE officers ... use triangulation equipment to zero in on a particular caller['s physical location]...cellular tracking is extremely beneficial, it's an investigative tool of the future." - Michael Guidry, of the Guidry Group, Houston, TX, security consultants; from "Fugitive relied on and was undone by cellular phone", _LA_Times_, 06/19/94 "There is a very real and critical danger that unrestrained public discussion of cryptologic matters will seriously damage the ability of this government to conduct signals intelligence and the ability of this government to carry out its mission of protecting national security information from hostile exploitation." - Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (then Director of the NSA) in a public speech in March 1979. "It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead." - Thomas Jefferson "Inman seemed to regard real, virile encryption to be something rather like a Saturday Night Special. 'My answer,' he said, 'would be legislation which would make it a criminal offense to use encrypted communication to conceal criminal activity.' "Wouldn't that render all encrypted traffic automatically suspect? I asked. "'Well,' he said, 'you could have a registry of institutions which can legally use ciphers. If you get somebody using one who isn't registered, then you go after him.'" - from John Perry Barlow's "Decrypting the Puzzle Palace",1992 [available online as ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/decrypting_puzzle.palace]. "The more people use computers, the more they find ways to abuse things." - Rick Sigurdson, IRS investigator & chairman of Federal Computer Investigations Committee (from AP Wire story "Policing Cyberspace", by Ted Anthony) "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." - Harry S. Truman on clandestine government From "Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman," Merle Miller, 1974, ch. 23 "The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams, "Notes for an Oration at Braintree", 1772 "Let us contemplate out forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." - Samuel Adams ("patriot, statesman, brewer"), speech, 1771 "Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse." - Rousseau, "The Social Contract," 1762 "There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses." - Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Bank Bill, 1832 "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." - Thomas Jefferson, 1820 "I still believe, in spite of the level of public inanity in this country, that people are going to look very unkindly on a scheme to put a government- mandated flap into the seats of their longjohns." - Matthew Mckenzie , alt.privacy post about Clipper "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." - Orson Welles "The defendant's objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendant's premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928) "Some folks have been saying recently, the real message is not so much content at this point but: 'What do we want? BANDWIDTH! When do we want it? NOW!!' 500,000 people on the Capitol steps should do it." - Richard Civille (DC Dir., Center for Civic Networking), nii_agenda mailing list post, 02/23/94 "Don't hate the media. Become the media." - Jello Biafra (formerly of the band Dead Kennedys. Successfully fought an attempt to prosecute him, the group, and various record distributors over the inclusion of an allegedly obscene miniposter by Austrian master surrealist painter, H. R. Giger, in one of their albums.) [The Clipper Chip scheme] "is a focal point for the distrust of goverment." - Clinton Brooks, NSA scientist who led the Clipper Chip project, _Wall_Street_Journal_ interview, 02/22/94 [No kidding, Clint.] "I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire." - Bruce Sterling, remarks on commercial use of private information, at Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference IV, Chicago IL, Mar. 26, 1994. [full transcript available at ftp.eff.org, /pub/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/cfp94_sterling.speech] "Behind all the hype shaping the electronic highway are corporate interests. These huge companies are doing the most natural thing in the world to them; following their own corporate interest." - Herber Schiller, "Information Superhighway: Paving Over the Public", Z Magazine, March 1994 "A trickle-up model for the new information economy could be effective with the proper filters (our own). Ideas bubbling up instead of homogenizing memes raining down." - Scott Marshall, from FringeWare mailing list commentary, March 14, 1994 "The FBI wanted us to introduce the [1994 Digital Telephony] bill today and I said absolutely not. They have to understand they have a Vermonter as the Chairman Of the [Technology and Law] committee and that we Vermonters respect our privacy." - Sen. Patrick Leahy, from James Bandler, "Eavesdropping Measure is Troubling to Leahy", _Rutland_Herald_, Mar. 27, 1994 "Clipper is like a requirement that house keys be 'escrowed' with the local police, or that all photos processed at the local drugstore be double-printed, with copies sent to the local 'Photo Escrow Center.' After all, how else can we catch child pornographers and other 'bad guys'?...And what about those curtains that 'encrypt' the visible contents of houses under surveillance?...Perhaps we need 'approved curtains'...And what about the many crimes people confess in their diaries?...Surely many crimes could be stopped if diaries, journals, and personal letters could be 'escrowed'--with suitable safeguards, of course, to ensure that only legitimate inspections were done (for example, J. Edgar Hoover's need to inspect diaries to find salacious sexual material). "Some may call me 'shrill' for citing the above points. I don't think so. We are at a kind of cusp in history, where privacy can either be secured through strong crypto--despite the crimes that may go undetected or unpunished because of this--or privacy can be handed over to others to protect or not protect as they see fit." - Timothy C. May , Usenet post to talk.politics.crypto, Apr. 13, 1994 "If you say to people that they, as a matter of fact, can't protect their conversations, in particular their political conversations, I think you take a long step toward making a transition from a free society to a totalitarian society." - Whitfield Diffie of Sun Microsystems, world renowned cryptographer, MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Thursday, 4/7/94 "There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace." - Dave Barry "Speaking or writing in forms not readily understandable to your enemies, your neighbors, your spouse, the cops, or your local eavesdropper is as old as humanity." - Timothy C. May , Usenet post to talk.politics.misc, Apr. 12, 1994 "How do we reconcile the promise of a new high-speed national medium with the threat of a far-reaching, nationwide surveillance network, as foreshadowed by the Clipper chip scheme and the draft Digital Telephony bill? Isn't sacrificing privacy to make policework easier a threat to the principles this nation was founded upon?" - Stanton McCandlish , EFF Online Activist, question posed to panellists at NII Public Interest Summit, Washington DC, Mar. 29, 1994 "Activism is the killer app for the net." - Steven Cherry , .signature file (email footer). "The part that frightens the hell out of me is the goverment deciding where technology goes." - Senator Patrick Leahy, on the FBI's proposed Digital Telephony surveillance legislation, in "Proposed wiretap law set off debate over Justice role", Kevin Power, _Government_Computer_News, Apr. 10, 1994 "Everybody has a different Internet." - Bruce Sterling, from EFF-Austin BoD minutes, Apr. 12, 1994 "But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having." - EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, "Cynthia Horner's Eulogy", Apr. 1994 "Our fear of technology is really a fear of empowerment. We now have the ability to design the reality we live in, and we have to step up to the occasion." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of _CYBERIA_, 1994 "Europe is opposed to the Clipper chip because it fears that the FBI or CIA could target European businesses... The global censorship plan has run up against opposition from European and American businesses that use encryption to send sensitive information. In a position paper to a consulate of European Union intelligence experts...the European organisation representing users of computer security has rejected the Clinton initiative as 'totally unacceptable'...the Information Security Business Advisory Group (Ibag), warns European governments to ignore overtures from the US government aimed at restricting access to the information superhighway to users who use encryption that the government agencies can decode." - UK _Independent_ article, "Spooks all set to hack it on the superhighway", Mar. 5 1994 "There happened in the Middle Ages what has happened so often since then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the established order were bent on defending it, not so much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their interests, as because it seemed to them indispensable to the preservation of society." - Henri Pirenne, _Medieval_Cities,_Their_Origins_and_the_Revival_of_Trade_, 1925 "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Jack London's "The Iron Heel"). "Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship." - Harry S. Truman "1. Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed. 2. No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated." - Article 21, Constitution of Japan "All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy." - Article 1, Section 1, Constitution of the State of California, USA "Did you learn how to think or how to believe?" - father of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who asked the young Nader this while questioning him on what he had learned in school one day. Nader describes this as a seminal event in leading him to become a critic of corporate and government policies. (from an interview with Ralph Nader by David Barsamian) "Democracy is not a spectator sport." - Craig Wilson "There are a lot of dumb people with powerful tools." - Jonah Seiger, former EFF Program Coordinator, 1994 An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. -- Paul Valery That which does not kill me, Makes me sleep till 3pm. -- Jim Carroll,from the CD Praying Mantis Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke The important thing is never to stop questioning. -- Albert Einstein A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself. -- Niels Bohr The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. -- Woody Allen I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo Galileo Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Salvor Hardin Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- Robert A. Heilein What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -- Ursula K. Leguin Humankind cannot stand very much reality. -- T. S. Elliot Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. -- Confucious Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy Two rights don't make a wrong, but three will get you back on the freeway. -- James Wesley Jackson Everything has changed except our way of thinking. -- Albert Einstein At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. -- Plato Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. (Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.) -- Occam's Razor No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. -- Aesop A warm smile is the universal language of kindness. -- William Arthur Ward I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. -- Aldous Huxley Make no judgements where you have no compassion. -- Anne McCaffrey We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. -- Edwar R. Murrow I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. -- Asleigh Brilliant Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will. -- James Stephens 1. Never be first. 2. Never be last. 3. Never volunteer for anything. LACKLAND'S LAWS If you cannot convince them, confuse them. Harry S. Trumanse Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. -- George Bernard Shaw Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions. -- Blaise Pascal "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, 56-120 A.D. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action" -- _You Only Live Twice_, Ian Fleming "The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad" -- S. Dali "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -- Albert Einstein For every complex problem, there is a solution that's simple, straightforward -- and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken Cogito ergo sum. -- Descarte "What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable." -- Louise Nevelson "If you fall down seven times, get up eight times." -- Japanese proverb "The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." -- George Washington "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." -- The Constitution of the United States of America Education is a progressive discovery of ignorance. -- Will Durant "To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target." -- Ashleigh Brilliant "Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!" --Daffy Duck "There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third." -- Timothy Leary My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant "Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet." -- Dave Barry Seek not the things that are too hard for thee, neither search the things that are beyond thy strength. -- Apocrypha Art is I; science is we. -Claude Bernard "Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers." --Voltaire "Assuming that the left wing or the right wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles." -- Pat Paulsen Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. -John Dewey Whatever else scientists do, the most significant thing they do is to try to find out things that are not known. -Dennis Flanagan Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand. -Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress. -J. Robert Oppenheimer A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone. -- William Wordsworth Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. --Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes) "The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." -- Nathaniel Borenstein Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. - Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion. -Goethe I believe that in actual fact, philosophy ranks before and above the natural sciences. -Thomas Mann You are obviously suffering from delusions of adequacy. -Alexis Carrington Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. -James Russell Lowel "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert einstein I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. -J. Edgar Hoover Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. -Confucius "....I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -- Thomas Edison Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. -- Albert Einstein Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -John F. Kennedy Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. -- A. Einstein "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." -- Albert Einstein. War does not determine who is right -- only who is left. -- Bertrand Russell He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die. -Giacomo Leopardi As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. -Oscar Wilde If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a citizen and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. -Albert Einstein Renegade academician. They're a dangerous breed when they go feral. -James P. Blaylock in "Lord Kelvin's Machine" I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -- you see, I have friends in both places. -- Mark Twain Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. -W. C. Fields The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives. --Winston Churchill Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin. -John Von Neumann Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -Howard Aiken In the long run, we are all dead. -- John Maynard Keynes But if you had restraint, common sense, and creativity, why would you be in college at all? --Roger Simon, _Chicago Tribune_ column If the only tool you have is a hammmer every problem begins to look like a nail. -- Mark Twain Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules. The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools. --King Crimson The bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean, that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. -- Lynn Lavner "Never underestimate the power of a simple courtesy. Your courtesy may not be returned or remembered, but discourtesy will." -- Princess Jackson SMith Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. -- Douglas Adams, _Last Chance to See_ The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. -- Harry S. Truman Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way. -- Daniele Vare It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one damn thing over and over. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay ... when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign Of Four "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." -- Thomas Paine, _Common Sense_, chap. 1. " In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons." -- Herodotus "No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions." Charles Steinmetz Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength. -- Tao te Ching A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes "The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?'" -- Alice Walker Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom--they are the pillars of society." Henrik Ibsen Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me. --Immanuel Kant, _Critique of Practical Reason_, 1788. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -A. Einstein A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -Winston Churchill The more fundamental the truth, the more politically incorrect is the expression thereof. -- G. Gordon Liddy It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. -- Sally Kempton I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo Galilei It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity, and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve one's sanity. -- Adam Dalgliesh "To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain low passion for middle-class respectability." -- Oscar Wilde The secret of life is in art. --Oscar Wilde, _The English Renaissance_. The absurd is clear reason recognizing its limits. --Albert Camus, _Le Suicide Philosophique_. An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise. --Victor Hugo, _Ninety-three_, 1874. When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. --A. A. Milne, _The House at Pooh Corner_. Everything is a dangerous drug to me except reality, which is unendurable. --Cyril Connolly, _The Unquiet Grave_. It's the truth even if it didn't happen. --Ken Kesey, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_. Sanity is a cozy lie. --Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation." City life: millions of people being lonesome together. --Henry David Thoreau. There are no principles, there are only events; there are no laws, there are only circumstances. --Balzac. All great ideas are dangerous. --Oscar Wilde, _De Profundis_. All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope. --Alexandre Dumas (the Elder), _The Count of Monte Cristo_. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. --Albert Einstein, contribution to _Living Philosophies_, Vol. 7. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have. --Gerald R. Ford (quoted in _Time_, 8 Nov 1976). I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. --Robert Frost (address in Berkeley, California, 1935). There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough. --Edna St. Vincent Milay, "Conversation at Midnight." Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. --Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Gay Science_. What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, helpless earthworm, depository of truth, sink of uncertainty and error. Glory and scum of the universe. --Blaise Pascal, _Pensees_ No. 131. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. --Blaise Pascal, _Pensees_, No. 200. The study of the beautiful is a duel in which the artist cries out with terror before he is vanquished. --Charles Baudelaire, _An Artist's Confessio No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. --William Blake, _Proverbs of Hell_. Every age is fed on illusions, lest man should renounce life early and the human race come to an end. --Joseph Conrad, _Victory_. Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. --Isaac D'Israeli, _Literary Character of Men of Genius_, Ch. 12. What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, _Spruche in Posa_, Pt. iii. The spirit of creation is simply the spirit contradiction. --Jean Cocteau, _Atlantic_, June 1958. Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. --Samuel Butler, _Note Books_. An honest God is the noblest work of man. --Samuel Butler, _Note Books_. To live is like to love--all reason against it, and all healthy instinct for it. --Samuel Butler, _Note Books_. Life is not an exact science, it is an art. --Samuel Butler, _Note Books_. Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. --Benjamin Franklin, _Poor Richard_, 1756. In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes. --Benjamin Franklin, "Letter to M. Leroy," 1798. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. --Albert Einstein, In an interview on "Belgenland," December 1930. What is now proven was once only imagined. --William Blake, "Proverbs of Hell." To create a little flower is the labour of ages. --William Blake, "Proverbs of Hell." Beauty is not caused, It is. --Emily Dickinson, _Further Poems_, No. xlix. Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. --O. W. Holmes, _The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, Ch. 2. Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. --W. S. Maugham, _The Moon and Sixpence_. Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. - Lessing The hardest tumble a man can take is to fall over his own bluff. - A. Bierce Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it. - Howard Jones Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all. - Heinrich Heine "Morphine" The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. - Kahlil Gilbran Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one. - Robert E. Lee Never explain - your friends don't need it, and your enemies won't believe you anyhow. - Elbert Hubbard We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. - Talmudic saying It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. - Herman Melville Faith may defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the impossible. - H.L. Mencken "I cannot convince myself that there is anyone so wise, so universally comprehensive in his judgment, that he can be trusted with the power to tell others: 'You shall not express yourself thus, you shall not describe your own experiences; or depict the fantasies which your mind has created; or laugh at what others set up as respectable; or question old beliefs; or contradict the dogmas of the church, of our society, our economic systems, and our political orthodoxy.'" - Jake Zeitlin "In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." -- German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoeller (b.1892 d.1984) (Actual quote includes homosexuals) "When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, I didn't like it, I didn't inhale it, and never tried it again." -- Bill Clinton Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth. - Feodor Dostoevsky "Reality keeps ruining my life" -- Calvin There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. -Disraeli "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- Thomas Jefferson "Military action is important to the nation--it is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction so it is important to examine it. -Sun Tzu There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." ---George Orwell To preserve liberty, it is necessary that the whole body of the people possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. --Richard Henry Lee They that can give up an essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin (1759) I could prove God statistically. -George Gallup We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. - Wernher Von Braun Rest in peace. The mistake shall not be repeated. - Cenotaph in Hiroshima Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald Knuth The passion for science and the passion for music are driven by the same desire; to realize beauty in one's vision of the world. -- Heinz Pagels In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche "Covenants without the Sword are mere words, and offer no Security to any man." -Thomas Hobbes "I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds" - Oppenhiemer at the Trinity Test Site "I seem to be to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" - Arthur Dent "Will you give all you can give, so that our banner may advance. Some will die and some will live. Will you stand up and take your chance?" -"Les Miserables" "Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein "Reality is Irrelevant" "Apathy Kills, and perhaps I am dead already" "Armor, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith Arrest, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusuallness. God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh - The Unauthorized Version" - Ambrose Bierce, selections from "The Devil's Dictionary" He findeth not who seeks his own The soul is lost that's saved alone. - John Whittier's "The Meeting" By ourselves is evil done, By ourselves we pain endure, By ourselves we cease from wrong, By ourselves become we pure. No one saves us but ourselves, No one can and no one may; We ourselves must treat the Path: Buddhas only show the way. - Theravada text Oh, it is real. It is the only real thing. Pain. So let us name the truth, like men. We are born to joy that joy may become pain. We are born to hope that hope may become pain. We are born to love that love may become pain. We are born to pain that pain may become more. Pain, and from that inexhaustible superflux We may give others pain as our prime definition. - Robert Penn Warren "Beware the ICE that kills...." - A long dead netrunner "I've Fallen and I can't get up" - U.S. Culture "Therefore a victorious army first wins and then seeks battle; a defeated army first battles and then seeks victory" - Sun Tzu "Freedom will cure most things...." - A.S. Neil, Summerhill "Butterflies and little girls need no excuses" - Lazarus Long "We don't need no education, We don't need no thought control, No Dark Sarcasm in the classroom, HEY! TEACHER! Leave them kids alone" - Pink Floyd "Ever since I was a young boy, I played the silver ball, From SoHo down to Brighton, I must have played them all, I ain't seen nothing like him, In any amusement hall, Deaf, Dumb, Blind kid sure plays a mean pinball!" -The Who "It's better to BURN out than fade away....." - Def Leppard "Don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind cause silence isn't golden when I'm holding it inside 'cause I've been where I have been an I've seen what I have seen I put the pen to the paper 'cause it's all a part of me Be it a song or a casual conversation To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservations Your words once heard they can place you in a faction My words may distrub but at least there's a reaction " - Guns 'n Roses "Please understand me I'm climbin through the wreckage of all my twisted dreams But this cheap investigation just can't stifle my screams And I'm waitin at the crossroads Waiting for you Waiting for you Where are you? No one's gonna bother me anymore No one's gonna mess with my head no more I can't understand what all the fightin's for But its so nice here down off the shore I wish you could see this 'cause there's nothing to see It's peaceful here and it's fine with me Not like the world where I used to live I never really wanted to live " - excerpt from "Coma" by Guns 'n Roses Maxims of the Undershafts: I ) If God gave the hand, let not man withold the sword. II ) All have the right to fight: None have the right to judge. III) To man the weapon: To heaven the victory. V ) Peace shall not prevail save with a sword in her hand. VI ) Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done. VII) Unashamed. from playbill of Major Barbara production at UMCP When you think you've hit the end, And feel you can go no further, Look forward and you shall see, The point at which your first real challenge begins, Beyond that, lies your future.... "Teach the children well and they shall lead the way..." The darkest places on earth are those that lie within yourself.. To deal with things not being as one would wish... To learn... To live.... To experience... To help.... To enjoy... To be the best you can.. To seek the truth but never have the arrogance to claim I've found it Peace... Freedom.. Never presume to know the future... Insanity is a virtue.. The sane are all too boring.. When you ask a question, be aware that you might not like the answer. However, this shouldn't stop you from asking... Death before dishonor... Searching for answers.. Soo many claim to have found them... Many claim that their answers are obvious.. I disagree.. Nothing is obvious...the question is.. How do you tell truth from lie? Fact from fiction? I don't know...but it ain't easy... Keep on truckin and Hope for the future people... "It is right it should be so; Man was made for Joy and Woe; And when this we rightly know, Thro' the World we safely go. Joy and Woe are woven fine, A Clothing for the soul divine." - - William Blake "Experiments have shown that even monkeys will work longer and harder to discover what is on the other side of a trapdoor than they will for either food or sex" - Huston Smith