Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Douglas McIlroy: Negative code
“The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code.” —Douglas McIlroy.
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David Wheeler: Layers of indirection
“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.” —David Wheeler.
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Herman Melville: Pasteboard masks
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.” —Herman Melville.
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Mark Twain: Kindness
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.”—Mark Twain.
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Susan Sontag: Tourist in other people’s reality
“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.” —Susan Sontag.
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Susan Sontag: Soft murder
“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder — a soft…
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Meghnad Desai: They were all liberals
“India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in…
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Friedrich Nietzsche: Strong individual
“The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize — and to live with the recognition — that the world is valueless in itself and…
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Karl Popper: Social creatures
“We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.” —Karl Popper.
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Ellen Goodman: ‘Graceful exit’
“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that…
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Arthur Miller: Challenge any inaccuracies
“People should have access to the data which you have about them. There should be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies.” —Arthur Miller.
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Benjamin Franklin: Don’t pull down your hedge
“Love your neighbour, yet don’t pull down your hedge.” —Benjamin Franklin.
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Eric Hoffer: Minding other people’s business
“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind…
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William Shakespeare: Smallest worm
“The smallest worm will turn being trodden on. “ —William Shakespeare, Henry VI.
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Hulk Hogan: Be a father first
“Be a father first. Don’t put a priority of being a friend with your wife first, or a friend with your kids first.” —Hulk Hogan.
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Carsten Jensen: Only the stupid
“Only the stupid steal from the rich. The clever steal from the poor. The law usually protects the rich.” —Carsten Jensen.
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Bernard Levin: First they make Gods
“Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.” —Bernard Levin.
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Haile Selassie: Throughout history
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” —Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.
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Ozzy Osbourne: I miss my mind the most
“Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most.” —Ozzy Osbourne.
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Ozzy Osbourne: ‘Secret intelligence’
“They say military have the so-called ‘secret intelligence’ — this amount of intelligence must be very secret, since I’ve never seen any intelligent military person, nor I have seen any sense in the bloody stupid wars.” —Ozzy Osbourne.
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Ozzy Osbourne: Memory
“To be a liar, you’ve got to have a great memory, and I don’t have a memory.” —Ozzy Osbourne.
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Samuel Beckett: Little chronicle
“It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one day like any other day, only shorter.” —Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies.
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Emma Lazarus: Give me your tired, your poor
“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” —Emma Lazarus, poet and playwright [from a poem written to raise funds for building the pedestal…
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Norman Cousins: World citizens
“People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.” —Norman Cousins.
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Hannah Senesh: Extinct stars
“There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.” —Hannah Senesh.
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Gregor Hohpe: Configuration
“Configuration is coding in a poorly designed programming language without tests, version control, or documentation.” —Gregor Hohpe.
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Mark Twain: Fluid prejudice
“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. “ —Mark Twain.
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Nelson Mandela: Prisoner of hatred
“A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.” —Nelson Mandela.
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Dr. Harold Urey: Nothing so deadly
“There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way.” —Dr. Harold Urey.
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Connie Francis: Everybody’s somebody’s fool
“There’s no exception to the rule, yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool.” —Connie Francis.
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H L Mencken: Maker of entertainment
“Has the great art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down, and its salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.”…
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Tony Kushner: Every student needs someone
‘Every student needs someone who says, simply, “You mean something. You count.”‘ —Tony Kushner.
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Orson Welles: Cuckoo-clock
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did they produce? The cuckoo-clock.” —Orson Welles, The Third Man.
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Iris Murdoch: Anything can be made holy
“I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.” —Iris Murdoch.
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Joan Didion: Writers are always selling somebody out
“There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out. “ —Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
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Northrop Frye: Literature encourages tolerance
“Literature encourages tolerance — bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they’re so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can’t see them also as possibilities.” —Northrop Frye.
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John Ousterhout: Best performance improvement
“The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state.” — John Ousterhout.
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Mark Twain: Misprint
“Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. “ —Mark Twain.
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Infinitely the most important
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. “—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Case of Identity.
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Mark Twain: Adversity
“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean. “ —Mark Twain.
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Marcel Proust: Suffering
“We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.” —Marcel Proust.
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Mark Twain: Holy passion of Friendship
“The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. “ — Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
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June Jordan: Fear of telling the truth
“As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.”…
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Mark Twain: Let us endeavor to live
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. “—Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
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Mark Twain: Oyster
“We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been |choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.” —Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
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Robert A Heinlein: Keystone of all tyranny
‘I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy … censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny…
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G K Chesterton: Simplicity
“There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.” —G. K. Chesterton.
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Julian McMahon: Some laws are wrong
“Some laws are wrong, and we have an obligation to speak out against those laws wherever they are.” —Julian McMahon.
