Quotes

…added in the order in which I discover them, re-rediscover them or remember them. Most recent at the top.

The use of ‘hacker’ to mean ‘security breaker’ is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean someone who loves to program, someone who enjoys playful cleverness, or the combination of the two. Richard M. Stallman

Life is complicated, and no-one wants to believe that life is complicated… In terms of the way they think, they can’t bear complexity. The idea that things aren’t easy to understand: that there’s a [on-the-one-hand] but there’s a [on-the-other-hand]; you have to think, there are gradations. No one wants that, they want to be told, or they want to be able to decide and say, ‘This is good. This is bad. I’m saying so.’, anything that in any way conflicts with that is not to be borne. Stephen Fry on Infantilism (The Rubin Report 2016-04-04)

To remove his statue strikes me as being stupid. The way to fight colonialism and the ideas behind it is not to pull down statues, it is actually to reveal; to say who he is, ‘this is who this man was’. You might occasionally throw an egg at it… Stephen Fry on the suggested removal of statues such as that of Cecil Rhodes (The Rubin Report 2016-04-04)

I’m not a Rationalist, I’m an Empiricist… Countries that have kings and queens, which are rationally stupid weird ideas, are empirically freer and more socially just than countries that don’t… Look at social justice, happiness, freedom and equality in the world, and you’re thinking Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Benelux countries, Britain — which does have very high levels of social justice — and Holland. And these countries have kings and queens; they have constitutional monarchies… Similarly, I am not necessarily in favour of separation of church and state. And the reason I’m not is that I come from a country where church and state are absolutely like that [bound tightly], and it’s the most secular society I have ever experienced; [it] has the highest level of atheism anywhere. And America has separation of church and state and not only do they all believe in god, they all believe in bloody angels! 74% of Americans think angels walk on the Earth! Stephen Fry on Empiricism (The Rubin Report 2016-04-04)

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours. Voltaire

The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on — because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions. Noam Chomsky

Freedom without opportunity is a devil’s gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal. Noam Chomsky

“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.” Noam Chomsky

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. A variation on Hanlon’s razor — never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity — and a derivative of Arthur C. Clarke’s Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), Section 32

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russel

It is easy to do justice, but it is very hard to do right. Sir Robert Morton in the play The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan
Meaning, presumably, that “justice” is the law as it is, whereas “right” is as it should be. Hence the motto that runs through the play, “Let right be done”. Fighting for justice: “let right be done” – The dramatic case of The Winslow Boy

Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.
Yoda (quote from ‘Star Wars 1’)

History has witnessed worse and more brutal occupiers than the Israelis. But I’ve never heard about an occupation that believes it is the victim. And the only victim.
Gideon Levy

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Not Plato

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones. [via Twitter]
Alain de Botton

It’s the little things that make Freedom become Not Freedom.
Theo de Raadt

Organizations tend to perpetuate the problems they were created to solve.
Brian Ford

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy. [Broadcast, July 11, 1932]
George Bernard Shaw

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety
Benjamin Franklin

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Sir William Blackstone KC SL

First, do no harm
One of the principal precepts of medical ethics — should be applied everywhere, especially in law and law enforcement.

In England, justice is open to all — like the Ritz Hotel.
Sir James Mathew

This is something that people don’t understand about science: it’s not about certainty, it’s not necessarily about facts, it’s about questions and the answers that you give.
Professor Jennifer Alice Clack FRS
(TV Broadcast: BBC4, ‘Beautiful Minds’, Series 2, Episode 1, 2012 April)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — Who guards the guards?
Juvenal

Fiat justitia ruat caelum — Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
Anon
(Quoted in Series 3, Episode 3 of the BBC drama “Garrow’s Law”)

All children should be free to grow up in a world where they are allowed to question, doubt, think freely and reach their own conclusions about what they believe.
Ariane Sherine

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Winston Churchill

Anywhere that there’s a hideous, territorial or ethnic or religious or violent dispute going on, you will find an Edwardian pillar box not very far away.
Jeremy Hardy

Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.
Always attributed to Douglas Bader, but I can’t believe that this wasn’t said in one form or another by some ancient Greek philosopher: how could something so obvious have waited until the mid-twentieth century to be stated? Unless, of course, it refers to a problem that has only existed since the twentieth century.

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
Bertrand Russel

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that a more refined view as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
Bertrand Russel

I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
Douglas Adams

The proof of understanding is the ability to explain it.
Anon.

I can explain it for you, but I can’t understand it for you.
Anon.

People want to see patterns in the world. It is how we evolved … So important is this skill that we apply it everywhere, warranted or not.
Benoît Mandelbrot

Benoit Mandelbrot dies. Survivors include an infinite number of smaller versions of himself.
Quentin Hardy

I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter. [Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.]
Blaise Pascal

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading, judgment difficult.
Hippocrates

I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Stephen F Roberts

How we make decisions is the most important decision we make.
Richard Quinn

Definition of a baby: an alimentary canal with a noise box at one end and no sense of decorum at the other.
Anon.

I keep six honest serving men
They taught me all I knew
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
Rudyard Kipling

…what we’re terrified by is realizing there’s a day of snow, no-one goes to work, and there’s no bloody difference.
David Mitchell, BBC Radio4’s The News Quiz, 2009-11-06/07

I like the idea that his sincerely held beliefs in the environment are accorded some respect, what’s annoying is that the way something gets more respect is to make it more like a religion: that people’s essentially delusional beliefs in omnipotent beings is something you’ve really got to respect and not sack them for, but just an opinion based on science you can ignore. That seems to be the wrong way round.
David Mitchell commenting, whilst a guest on BBC Radio4’s The News Quiz (2009-11-06/07), that a High Court Judge has ruled green beliefs deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14838303
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/03/tim-nicholson-climate-change-belief
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/green-beliefs-win-legal-protection-1814180.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/04/green_philosophy_ok/

It would seem that perfection is attained not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed. [Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.]
Antoine de Saint Exupéry

…the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest science experiment since God said, “Any minute now it should go bang”. Sandi Toksvig, BBC Radio4’s The News Quiz, 2009-10-16/17

There is none more in favour of self-sufficiency than those in receipt of a large legacy.
Can’t remember who said this but it’s noteworthy.

Select committees are pretty much the only place in parliament where MPs do what you’d naively hope they do all the time: sit down, hear a lot of evidence on an important issue, and then have a good hard think about it.
Ben Goldacre

The most exciting phrase in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! but That’s funny…
Isaac Asimov

I am glad that IP is not IP
[I am glad that Internet Protocol is not Intellectual Property]
Can’t remember who said this but it’s thought provoking given the modern world’s dependence upon the Internet.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible
Stanisław Jerzy Lec

An essay is only complete when there is nothing left to delete
Sometimes attributed to Voltaire, but I can find no reference. However, see Saint Exupéry above.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man
Jesuit motto

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one
Thomas Carlyle

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
George Santayana

Learning from one’s own mistakes is all very well, but learning from the mistakes of others is cheaper
Sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde, but I can find no reference.

We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think!
Ernest Rutherford

The market is a very sophisticated mechanism: sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down. When there’s more greed than fear it goes up; when there’s more fear than greed it goes down.
George Parr, Bremner, Bird and Fortune, Channel 4, 2008-11-02

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russel

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
John Maynard Keynes in reply to a criticism, during the Great Depression, of having changed his position on monetary policy.

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God…
Bertrand Russel

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Robert Louis Stevenson

The private sector is just incompetence combined with greed. At least the public sector is well-meaning incompetence.
Jeremy Hardy, BBC Radio4’s The News Quiz, 2009-02-27/28

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Sir Winston Churchill

…to suggest that Islam is radically different from Christianity when they’re both just Judaism with the jokes taken out.
Jeremy Hardy, BBC Radio4’s The News Quiz, 2009-02-13/14

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Anon.