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So this termite walks into a bar and says "Is the bartender here?"
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In one ear and gone tomorrow.
It's an ill wind that spoils the broth.
Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.
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So, if it is an ox, do we go on by it, or do we go up to it,
so as to do it in on my ax?
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A student came to Wirth and said, `I have this idea for memory
management. We just store the number of references to each cell of
memory as the program progresses. When the count for a cell reaches
zero, the cell may be reclaimed.' Wirth said: `A student came to me
and said, `I have this idea for memory management...'
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A student was unsuccessfully trying to fix a crashed machine by toggling
the on-off switch. Minsky apprehended the student, and said `You can't fix
the machine by just turning it on and off without knowing what you're doing.'
Minsky reached down and toggled the switch; the machine began working.
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CHUANG TZU 369 BC - 286 BC
Suppose I am arguing with you, and you get the better of me. Does
the fact that I am not a match for you mean that you are really right
and I am really wrong? Or if I get the better of you, does the fact
that you are not a match for me mean that I am really right and you
are really wrong? Must one of us necessarily be right and the other
wrong, or may we not both be right or both be wrong? But even if I
and you cannot come to an understanding, someone else will surely be a
candle to our darkness. Whom then shall we call in as arbitrator in
our dispute? If it is someone who agrees with you, the fact that he
agrees with you makes him useless as an arbitrator. If it is someone
who agrees with me, the fact that he agrees with me makes him useless
as an arbitrator. If it is someone who agrees with neither of us, the
fact that he agrees with neither of us makes him useless as an
arbitrator. If it is someone that agrees with both of us, the fact
that he agrees with both of us makes him useless as an arbitrator. So
then you and I can never reach an understanding. Are we then to go on
piling arbitrator on arbitrator in the hope that someone will
eventually settle the matter? This would lead to the dilemma of the
Reformation and the Sage. (1)
(1) Deadlock.
Take the case of some words. I do not know which of them are in
any way connected with reality or which are not at all connected with
reality. If some that are so connected and some that are not so
connected are connected with one another, then as regards truth or
falsehood the former cease to be any different from the latter.
However, just as an experiment, I will now say them: `If there was a
beginning, there must have been a time before the beginning began, and
if there was a time before the beginning began, there must have been a
time before the time before the beginning began. If there is being,
there is also not-being. If there was a time before there began to be
any not-being, there must also have been a time before the time before
there began to be any not-being.' But here am I, talking about being
and not-being and still do not know whether it is being that exists
and not-being that does not exist, or being that does not exist and
not-being that really exists! I have spoken, and do not know whether
I have said something that means anything or said nothing that has any
meaning at all.
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HEGEL 1770-1831
Existence, then, is not to be taken here as a predicate or as a
determination of essence, the proposition of which would run: essence
exists, or has existence; on the contrary, essence has passed over
into Existence; Existence is essence's absolute emptying of itself or
self-alienation, nor has it remained behind on the side of it. The
proposition should therefore run: essence is existence; it is not
distinct from its Existence. Essence has passed over into Existence
in so far as essence as ground no longer distinguishes itself from
itself as the grounded, or in so far as this ground has sublated
itself. But this negation is essentially its position, or absolute
positive continuity with itself, its identity-with-self achieved in
its negation.
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WALTER LIPPMANN 1889-1974
I doubt whether the student can do a greater work for his nation in
this grave moment of its history than to detach himself from its
preoccupations, refusing to let himself be absorbed by distractions
about which, as a scholar, he can do almost nothing.
The Scholar in a Troubled World, (1932)
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LAURENCE STERNE 1713-1768
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it,
that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and,
from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the
stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is
of great use.
bk.ii, ch.19
ALEXANDER POPE 1688-1744
Like following life thro' creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.
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SIR JOHN BETJEMAN 1906-1984
`Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another--
Let us hold hands and look.'
She, such a very ordinary little woman;
He, such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop's ingle-nook.
--In a Bath Teashop.
JEAN-PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN 1755-1794
Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment,
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.
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WILLIAM BLAKE 1757-1827
Everything that lives, Lives not alone, nor for itself.
xi.26
HENRY JAMES 1843-1916
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is
an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest
silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and
catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
JOHN DONNE 1571-1631
No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece
of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away
by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any
man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It
tolls for thee.
Meditation XVII
MATTHEW ARNOLD 1822-1888
This truth --- to prove, and make thine own:
`Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.'
Isolation. To Marguerite, l.29
CLAUDE LE PETIT 1638-1662
Le monde est plein de fous, et qui n'en veut pas voir
Doit se tenir tout seul, et casser son miroir.
The world is full of fools, and he who would not see it should
live alone and smash his mirror.
An adaptation from an original form attributed to Claude Le Petit
(1640-1665) in Discours Satiriques, 1686
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JOHN KEATS 1795-1821
Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact and reason -- Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine
isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from
being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.
RICHARD BARNFIELD 1574-1627
Nothing more certain than incertainties;
Fortune is full of fresh variety:
Constant in nothing but inconstancy.
The Shepherd's Content, xi
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