Some of Gabes' other pages:

"Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with Apple."

Byte, December 1994

"Dune"
moved to http://freenet.msp.mn.us/people/gabriel/quotes.alpha.html


"Princess Bride"
"LIFE IS PAIN Highness!
 Anyone who says differently is selling something."
Wesley



"We'll never survive."
"Nonsense, your just saying that because no one ever has."
Buttercup & Wesley as they head for the 'Fire Swamp'



"YOU FOOL! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most
 famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly
 less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death
 is on the line'"
Vincini to Wesley a moment before he dies of poisining 
to Iocan Powder




"Star Trek"
"I've discovered that one of the best ways to understand
 humans, is by working with them in groups."
"Working in groups?  That's not something you have to do
 when you're omnipotent."
Data & Q (episode? of Star Trek Next Generation)



"The more complex the mind,
 the greater the need for the simplicity of play.
Kirk, "Shore Leave", stardate 3025.8






"Life without you would be like a broken pencil."
"How's that?
"Completely pointless."
Blackadder, Series II




"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.  Attack ships on fire off the
 shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the
 Tannhauser Gate.  All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"
Roy Baty, in "Blade Runner"




"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too
 dark to read."
Groucho Marx


You can meet friends everywhere but you cannot meet enemies anywhere --
you have to make them.


"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
Mark Twain of himself; but so also the Algonquian tribes


"The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man."
W. Churchill


"I've always been crazy, but its kept me from going insane."
Wayomre's Blues






"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 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 talked
with the  best people, and I can assure you that data processing
is a fad that won't last out the year."
The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

 
 
"But what ... is it good for?"
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,  
commenting on the microchip.



"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of
Digital Equipment Corp.,  1977



"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication.  The device is inherently of no value to us."
Western Union internal memo, 1876.


     
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.  Who would pay  
for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment
in the radio in the 1920s.



"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
A Yale University management professor in response to Fred
Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. 
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)



"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.



"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary  
Cooper."
Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in
"Gone With  The Wind."

  

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say  
America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

  

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

  

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

  

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment.  The  
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives
for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

  

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even
built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? 
Or we'll give it to you.  We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll 
come work for you.'  And they said, 'No.' So then we went to 
Hewlett-Packard, and they  said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't
got through college yet.'"
Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get
Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

  

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves
largess out of the public treasury."
Alexander Tyler, eighteenth-century Scottish historian



"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, 
there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government 
regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words."
From an article on the growth of federal regulations
in the Oct. 24th issue of National Review



"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction  
and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.
He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's 
revolutionary rocket work.

  

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of  
your muscles?  It can't be done.  It's just a fact of life. You just have 
to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of 
weight training."
Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by  
inventing Nautilus.

  

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? 
You're crazy."
Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project 
to drill for oil in 1859.

  

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.



"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, 
Ecole Superieure de Guerre.



"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.



"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872



I am glad this next one didn't come true
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from
the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed
Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.



"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Bill Gates, 1981

  

"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as
easy to use as his telephone.  That wish has come true, since I no longer
know how to use my telephone."
Stroustrup



"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I
hate plants."
A. Whitney Brown



"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it---and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again---and that is
well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Writer, 1835-1910)



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



"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_



"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river
and he's not the same man."
Heraclitas



"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable."
John F. Kennedy



"Life may have no meaning.
Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove."
Ashleigh Brilliant



"Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask "Why me?"  Then a voice answers
'Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.'"
Charlie Brown, _Peanuts_ [Charles Schulz]



"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?'
Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'"
Charlie Brown, _Peanuts_ [Charles Schulz]



"Money can't buy you happiness, but wouldn't you like to find out for
yourselves?"
W. Royster





Bigamy by Oscar Wilde

Committee by Richard Harkness

Member of Congress
         by Mark Twain 

Monogamy by Oscar Wilde



"What is a committee?  A group of the unwilling,
picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary."
Richard Harkness, _The New YorkTimes_, 1960




"Suppose you were an idiot. And supose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself."
Mark Twain



"Bigamy is having one wife too many.  Monogamy is the same."
Oscar Wilde
(Perhaps for political correctness, the phrase should place "spouse"
in the place of wife ;-) )


These two were provided by  Stacy Johnson:
"A BOOK IS A MIRROR;
IF AN ASS PEERS INTO IT, YOU CAN'T EXPECT AN APOSTLE TO PEER OUT."
G.C.LICHTENBERG



"BLESSED IS THE SPOT...WHERE MENTION OF GOD HATH BEEN MADE AND HIS
PRAISE GLOFIED."
BAHA'U'LLAH

visits since Feb 18, 1996


Please send comments to gabriel@freenet.msp.mn.us.

Last modified September 14, 1997