Quotes

Zieralski, Ed. 100 straight targets, and he's only 93. The San Diego Union Tribune. May 19, 2004

Snow said he's also been lucky to have been blessed with good health. He suffered an aneurysm at 87. When told he looked good now and must be feeling better, he said: No. You're never OK once it starts breaking down. Once you fall apart, you're never the same. It's like a car. You're only new once. A person is only young once. You can never go back. You just try to go downhill as slowly as possible.

Patrick, Urey W. Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness. U. S. Department of Justice, Firearms Training Unit, FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia. July 14, 1989

An issue that must be addressed is the fear of over penetration widely expressed on the part of law enforcement. The concern that a bullet would pass through the body of a subject and injure an innocent bystander is clearly exaggerated. Any review of law enforcement shootings will reveal that the great majority of shots fired by officers do not hit any subjects at all. It should be obvious that the relatively few shots that do hit a subject are not somehow more dangerous to bystanders than the shots that miss the subject entirely.

Kessler, Glenn. Friendship, His Way. The Washington Post. June 8, 2004

Koizumi also has a raw sense of humor. During a meeting in Crawford, Tex., in 2003, the two men [Koizumi and Bush] sat by the pool for several hours, with only interpreters. At one point, Koizumi mentioned he had listened to an Elvis Presley song the previous day. Usually people stop there. But Koizumi actually started to sing the song, the official said. That lack of formality is what Bush likes about Koizumi. Koizumi is Japan's Texan.

Pierce, Kerry. Mark Rasche, Building a successful woodworking business. Woodwork. August 2004

Rasche doesn't offer an explicitly stated guarantee, although he has—without charge—made occasional repairs to clients' furniture, even several years after its completion. This, he feels, adds to his reputation, which is so essential for someone in the cabinetmaking field. I'd much rather have a happy customer than a bad reputation. R. M. Frank, the car rebuilder for whom Rasche worked as a young man, put it this way: You can work all your life to build a reputation and then lose it in a second. This is an axiom Rasche has tried to follow throughout his career as a cabinetmaker.

Diehl, Jackson. Backing Bush's Mideast Vision. The Washington Post. June 21, 2004

A lot of these people don't think much of George Bush, which is one reason why the coalition hasn't entirely coalesced. But almost all of them say that Bush's preaching on democracy over the past year, and the modest action that has come with it, has changed the terms of debate about the future of the Middle East, both in and outside the region. Bush's campaign frightened people, King Abdullah of Jordan said in an interview here last week. But it also allowed some of us to say that if we don't come up with our own initiative, something will be forced on us. And once you say you are going to reform, you trigger a process that you can't turn back.

Keith, Elmer. Chapter III: Learning To Shoot. Sixguns by Keith. 1961

From the start, consider all guns as being loaded whether you know them to be empty or not. Treat them as loaded guns always and you will never have an accident. I am scared of empty guns and keep mine loaded at all times. The family knows the guns are loaded and treats them with respect. Loaded guns cause few accidents; empty guns kill people every year.

Pearson, Helen. Low-carb diets get thermodynamic defence. news@nature.com. August 16, 2004

Food science and nutrition researcher Donald Layman of Illinois State University in Urbana-Champaign argues that different diets suit different people. Eventually, decisions about which regime is most appropriate will be based on a range of health factors, such as risk of heart disease or diabetes. That to me is where nutrition is going, Layman says.

Churchill, Winston quoted by pbass. How to pronounce CETME. rec.guns.

It is the inalienable right of every Englishman to pronounce foreign words exactly as he pleases. — Churchill

Moyers, Bill. 2004 National Convention: Bill Moyers. Society of Professional Journalists. September, 2004

Looking back on that experience and all that followed I often think of what Joseph Lelyveld told aspiring young journalists when he was executive editor of the New York Times. You can never know how a life in journalism will turn out, he said. Decide that you want to be a scholar, a lawyer, or a doctor and your path to the grave is pretty well laid out before you. Decide that you want to enter our rather less reputable line of work and you set off on a route that can sometimes seem to be nothing but diversions, switchbacks and a life of surprises with the constant temptation to keep reinventing yourself.

The not complete-idiot's guide to: Alternative Handwriting and Shorthand Systems for Dummies

English spelling is so quirky that winning a spelling bee is a major achievement, and even the champs falter at some point.

Gatto, John Taylor. Chapter 6: The Lure of Utopia. The Underground History of American Education. 2000-2003

What are we left with then besides some unspeakable Chautauqua, a liar's world which promises that if only the rules are followed, good lives will ensue? Inconvenience, discomfort, hurt, defeat, and tragedy are inevitable accompaniments of our time on earth; we learn to manage trouble by managing trouble, not by turning our burden over to another.

Jones, Tamara. A: Quiz Bowl. Q: What Do Top Game Show Players Prize?. The Washington Post. October 5, 2004

Truth be told, Jennings continued, he prefers creating questions to answering them, likening the quest for the perfect question to a very restrictive art form, like haiku.

Connolly, Joe. Some Passions Make Poor Business Pursuits. Startup Journal.com

Running a business is about paying your bills and meeting the payroll and growing incrementally, he [Paul Casey] says.

Goff, Max. The Blacksmith and the Bookkeeper, Part 3. Java.net. October 12, 2004

My relationship with my accountant is as personal as that of my priest. His empathy, discretion and creativity are as important to me as is his topical knowledge. Arguably, he has already evolved well beyond his know-how based ancestor that kept the books for Longfellow's smithy. Indeed, the difference between the blacksmith and the bookkeeper was never one of know-how; but rather, the extent to which hyper-human attributes embossed their particular vocation.

Carleo-Evangelist, Jordan. Politics, paranoia fuel war of words over guns. Times Union. October 18, 2004

So Lizotte and some of his colleagues offered this advice to Reno: School shootings are not the issue. The issue is kids selling drugs on street corners in big cities. ...

It's a fight fueled in part by geography. New York, like the country as a whole, is sharply divided between urban and rural areas, and demography plays a large role in cultivating diverse attitudes about the role of guns in society.

Graham, Paul. Good Bad Attitude. Paul Graham. 2004

Show any hacker a lock and his first thought is how to pick it.

Lamb, Brian. Debunking the Myths. C-SPAN. January 6, 1997

And I love it when people call the call-in show and the guy says, Why didn't you get tough with the president? Why didn't you ask Gingrich that tough question. My reaction is, What is it? Did you understand what the problem was out there? Did you understand that that question wasn't answered or whatever it is? They say Sure, of course, I do. I watch C-SPAN. I understand the world. I'm, you know, a tough guy. Then I remind them what they really want. Here's what they're worried about: They're worried about the guy down the street who they think is dumber than they are. They're constantly worried about the guy down the street. You've got to straighten it out for that bozo who lives down the street. I don't feel the need for it, and I don't think you need it either.

Gatto, John Taylor. Chapter 9: The Cult of Scientific Management, quoting Education in the Forming of American Society, by Bernard Bailyn who is here speaking of Thomas Davidson's History of Education. The Underground History of American Education. 2000-2003

It [the book] soon displayed the exaggeration of weakness and extravagance of emphasis that are the typical results of sustained inbreeding.

Brophy, Tom. Make Employers an Offer To Land the Job You Seek. Career Journal.

You're worth more than you think to employers. Otherwise, your last company would not have paid you what it did. But by giving yourself a daily dose of rejection, you will fall deeper into depression. If you don't address this, it may become a critical problem. You must create victories on a regular basis, or you'll become immobilized and your job search will die.

Pausch, Randy. An Academic's Field Guide to Electronic Arts [PDF]. 2004

EA veterans say that the major reason games ship late is due to a lack of focus in the design vision: games are usually late because the development team doesn't know what it is building.

Kaplan, Robert D. The Media and Medievalism. Policy Review Online, Number 128. December 2004

To wit, some of our most prestigious correspondents have occasionally remarked that the only favoritism they harbor is toward the weak or toward the victims in any crisis. That may do in church, but it does not necessarily lead to trustworthy analysis. ...

One side's being weaker than the other—or harboring more victims—does not necessarily mean that its cause is just or even moral.

Krim, Jonathan; Witte, Griff. Average-Wage Earners Fall Behind. The Washington Post. December 31, 2004

It is that combination of technology savvy, analytical thinking and interpersonal skills that could be the magic formula for U.S. workers—whether the jobs are in health care, education, financial services or any other field. Jobs that involve all three qualities, said Thomas A. Kochan, an MIT management professor, are hard to duplicate with machines or with low-wage workers from abroad, putting the Americans who fill them in a strong position to demand not just good wages, but benefits, too.

Rauch, Walt; Metcalf, Geoff. Talking with the prickly man. GeoffMetcalf.com.

Rauch: Let's set up a hypothetical. You have had the confrontation and you have taken a life. You've shot someone or caused another person's death in self-defense. You are now looking at $25,000 minimum to defend yourself against the criminal charges. We haven't even gotten to the civil charges yet. There is a big price to be paid for defending yourself. Of course, you can die and avoid the bill. ...

So at a minimum, you should be taken into custody. If you are taken into custody, you should have a hearing. If you have a hearing, then bail should be set. If bail is set, you have been charged. If you have been charged, you need a lawyer. One runs from the first to the next. The lawyer charges between $150 and $400 an hour. It's the system. It's not a good system, but they can't just [let you go] and say, good job. ...

Metcalf: And in many cases, it is that concern on the part of the would-be victim, wondering if he should do anything and failing to recognize that he could die in the process.

Rauch: That's a moral decision and a business decision they have to make themselves. On any given day, it may be better to give the $5 or $500 in your pocket and walk away. If you can walk away and it cost you $10, fine. It was a cheap confrontation.

Harris, Lee. Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology. Policy Review Online, Number 114. August & September, 2002

My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late sixties. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple—to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason—because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy—a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view—for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

Graham, Paul. How to start a startup. Paul Graham. March 2005

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

Kessler, Andy. How We Got Here: A Silicon Valley and Wall Street Primer. p. 27. 2004

Dissenters were out on the Fringe. As outsiders, no one would hire them, so they were forced to be entrepreneurs.

Reel, Monte. Brazil Weighs a National Gun Ban. The Washington Post. October 1, 2005

If the ban is passed, then I definitely expect other countries to try the same thing, said Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations leading a U.N. effort to curb the illegal gun trade. It will send a message to other countries influenced by powerful gun lobbies that it's possible to work around them. ...

Supporters of a ban do not claim that outlawing the sale of guns and ammunition would put a stop to violence. Instead, they say the initial aim is to reduce the huge number of guns flooding the country of 186 million people. An estimated 17.5 million guns are currently in Brazil, about 90 percent in civilian hands and half of them illegal. ...

Early public opinion polls show that the argument has impressed the public, with more than 70 percent of respondents saying they support the ban. Paulo Amendoim, president of Rocinha's resident association and host of a weekly community radio program, said he thinks most will vote for the ban, even though they do not expect it to solve their problems.

a woman, in private conversation with Mohammed. The trial, as some Iraqis see it.... Iraq The Model.

You know, we never thought of carrying arms and fighting, we were good citizens serving the country with the knowledge and degrees we earned with hard work and we never imagined we would be forced one day to carry arms and battle the Ba'athists in the mountains and deserts but it's Saddam and his oppressive regime that left us with no other choice.

Graham, Paul. How To Do What You Love. Paul Graham. January 2006

Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you're producing, you'll know you're not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too palpably flawed one you're actually writing. ...

[If] you asked random people on the street if they'd like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you'd find most would say something like "Oh, I can't draw." This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try. Because the fact is, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty years, they'd get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say I can't.

U.S. Army. FM 100-20: Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict: Acronyms and Abbreviations. GlobalSecurity.org Army Field Manuals.

civil war: A war between factions of the same country; there are five criteria for international recognition of this status: the contestants must control territory, have a functioning government, enjoy some foreign recognition, have identifiable regular armed forces, and engage in major military operations.

Adams, John. John Adams Quotes. Quotes.

There are two types of education... One should teach us how to make a living, And the other how to live.
—John Adams

Costello, Patrick. The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjo. Howandtao.com.

You might as well start working on entertaining people because once your friends find out that you can play the banjo they will drive you half crazy to play something for them. Like an old burlesque comedian told me years ago The audience doesn't care how good you play, just how good you make them feel.

Levy, Steven. Chapter 2: The Hacker Ethic. Hackers, 25th Anniversary Edition. p. 30. 2010.

What really drove the hackers crazy was the attitude of the IBM priests and sub-priests, who seemed to think that IBM had the only real computers, and the rest were all trash. You couldn't talk to those people—they were beyond convincing.

Alcock, Donald. Chapter 8: Common Storage. Illustrating FORTRAN. p. 83, 1982.

List processing is extremely useful, and, to enthusiasts, addictive.

Abbott, Jacob. What would be the Danger?. The Boy's Own Workshop. 1866.

We don't praise apprentices much, said Ebenezer, especially when they are beginning, for fear it should make them conceited. People that know very little are always apt to be very vain of what little they do know.

Roberts, Russ. Chapter 10: No Host No Problem. The Price of Everything, p. 147, 2008.

The rich countries have more open borders to products and services and people. The poor countries are more likely to restrict trade. Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty. It is better to leverage the skills of others and buy what you cannot make effectively on your own.

Huang, Gregory T. Communal Culture Spawns Rental Startups in Construction, Healthcare. Xconomy. May 7, 2015.

To build anything successful, Schlacks says, a lot does come down to hard work. You really need a work ethic to get anything done, no matter what scene you're in. You have a great idea, and then there are valleys after that. You have to push through those and keep testing it, believing it, working at it. So many people don't push past the low point.