Steve's Quotes Page

The future keeps telling us what the past was about. You make the past mean different things by what you do with the time that comes after.
--Lt. Arthur Fancy, NYPD Blue

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now."
-- Japanese saying

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
-- from a bumper sticker

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
-Douglas Adams, on Windows '95

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
--??

We had 12.9 gigabytes of (Microsoft) PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, "What a huge waste of corporate productivity." So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if they would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, "What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work."
--Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems

If you aren't part of the solution, you must be the precipitate.
--unknown

Sony's market share for color TVs in 1995 was 7% according to Appliance Manufacturer, April 1996, p. 32. Honda's is about 7% in the car business.

Funny, the press considers them winners. Apple's market share is about the same percentage, but we're doomed. If you watch a Sony, drive a Honda, and use a Macintosh, you must be really stupid.
--Guy Kawasaki

No matter how rich and intimidating each leader of our industry is, or would-be leader, none of them predicted the world we live in now, and by extrapolation they are powerless to control the world we will live in in 1997 and beyond.
- Dave Winer on Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison in Que Sera, Sera (a DaveNet piece)

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery - it recharges by running.
- Bill Watterson in a speech to Kenyon College called Some thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled

A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn't particularly feel like it. -Alistair Cooke

"I'm not very good at problems," admitted Milo.
"What a shame," sighed the Dodecahedron. "They're so very useful. Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one foot tail?"
"Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped.
"I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "But if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him."
"That's absurd," objected Milo, whose head was spinning from all the numbers and questions.
"That may be true," he acknowledged, "but it's completely accurate, and as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong? If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself."
- from Norton Juster's wonderful book, The Phantom Tollbooth (with correspondingly excellent illustrations by Jules Feiffer)

now that you're gone - nothing is wrong - but everything's changed
...
now that you're gone - everything's wrong - though nothing has changed
- "Ever After", Joe Jackson, Night Music

Intel: Putting the "backward" in "backward compatible." - unknown

"I know pop music critics won't get it because it's not really a pop record. It's absurd when they say it fails as a pop record. It's like saying this black jacket I'm wearing fails as a green jacket."
- Joe Jackson on Night Music, IMPACT, April 1995, P.10

Her
When I see her
I know I will act like a fool
But I do not care.
-- kmr@ix.netcom.com

Time exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once.
Space exists so that everything doesn't happen to you.
- unknown; heard on Prairie Home Companion.

Forever caught in desert lands
One has to learn to disbelieve the sea
- "Mad Man Moon", Genesis, Trick of the Tail

Q: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
A: Five?
Correct Answer: No, four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
- Abraham Lincoln

If you'd like a videotape of tonight's program then turn on your damn VCR! - David Letterman

People seldom know what they want until you give them what they ask for. - (unknown)

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. - (unknown)

I had far rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was a children's game in which all the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end. - T.S. Eliot

History and economics teach us that if a job is lost because of better productivity, the person who held that job is freed to help meet some other need. Until we have infinitely good education, infinitely good service everywhere and beautiful inner cities, there are jobs left to be done. - Bill Gates

If you live, you will change. - (Unknown, but I got it from DC's The Question)

Everything that I believe is wrong with you is wrong with me.
- "Hand Me Downs", Indigo Girls, Nomads, Indians, Saints

Aliens now rule the planet. I told them girls make good zoo exhibits. - Calvin (Bill Watterson)

There is a basic rule about tanks, and you should know it: The only man who ever beat a tank was John Wayne. And he was in another tank. - Kurt Vonnegut

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. - G. K. Chesterton

We ask advice, but we mean approbation. - Charles Caleb Colton

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that three of his fingers are pointing at himself. - Anonymous

A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly the lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. - Kurt Vonnegut

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life. - Albert Einstein

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. - Lamartine

I was out in the field
Collecting strength for my shield
And I misplaced what made me real
- Moxy Früvous, "Misplaced", wood

Anyway - they say she comes on a pale horse
But I'm sure I hear a train
- Genesis, "Anyway", The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

One does not fall in love by accident; a decision is made to love.
- (unknown)

Look straight at the coming disaster
Realize what you've lost
You keep handing out horseshoes
And horseshoes have gotta be tossed...
- Moxy Früvous, "Horseshoes", wood