"I not only disagree totally with everything you have said, but I am revolted by the whimpering tone in which people of your kind express themselves." -Unknown

"America has no native criminal class except for congress." -Mark Twain

"In SAC, perfection is the standard. Anyone failing to exceed this standard will be punished disproportionately to their offense. Those who commit a minor error in judgement will be castrated and anally violated simultaneously and constantly for an indeterminate time period. Those who drastically fuck up will be chastised privately, then promoted to a position that is even further above their already exceeded level of incompetence. If anyone doubts this, just look around you."
- Found scrawled on a panel in a B-52 based at Barksdale AFB La.

"Women don't sew wild oats; they harvest them." -Sparky

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder - and vice versa." -Sparky

"Historically, the Baltic states have produced more warfare than they could consume locally." -Unknown

"If I were any better (or worse), I'd be twins!" -Ed Phenicie

"If you're gonna do me wrong, do it right." - Vern Gosdin

"My solution to the problem would be to tell them frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age." - Curtis LeMay

"Al Gore a Climatologist? Yeah, and maybe I'm a Chinese Jet Pilot."
- Sparky

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."
- Winston Churchill

"The Management of Vices is the Secret of Life."
- Sparky

"If the media likes a candidate, vote for the other one."
- Sparky

The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey. By diligent effort, I learned to like it.
- Winston Churchill

"Out to go back, back to go in, in to go forward, forward to go out."
- Orbital Mechanics Maxim from "The Integral Trees", by Larry Niven

"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful."
- A. S. LaVey

Political Correctness: A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous main-stream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
- Winston Churchill

"I wish I had more time to organize my ignorance" -Ed Phenicie

"Don't pull on my ears, I know what I'm doing." -Unknown

"Northrop: the cutting edge of forty-year-old technology!" -Scott D. Larsen

"Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's really where you wish they were." -George E. Bergman

Sparky's 1st Theorem of Strip Joints: Some women like money AT LEAST as much as most men like sex.

"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers." -Kahil Gibran

"We're concerned about concerns over whether weather impacts impacts." -David H. Berg

BOHICA: Bend Over Here It Comes Again -Unknown

"If they didn't pay us to come here we'd probably buy tickets to watch!" -Ed Phenicie

13 April 1990 Los Angeles Times article states Northrop is trimming the quality control inspection program on the B-2.
Ed Phenicie; "What are they gonna do, go negative?"

"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber." -Winston Churchill

"The second derivative of data is usually crap." -Dave Carlson

Often, an attempt at increasing an empire leads to a general and indiscriminate Bone-arama. -Sparky

"He wouldn't be that bad of a guy if he wasn't always telling everybody what a great guy he is."
-Sparky speaking of Rick Stuke

"Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." -Earl Wilson

"If you ever find two software engineers running the same Jovial program, one of them is not needed." -Sparky

"This has been a rough war for tyrants and those who try to control the thoughts of their people. In Baghdad--but also in Manhattan, at the headquarters of the Times, NBC, CBS and ABC." - Dick Morris

"Looks good from here!"
- Nuclear weapons testing maxim

Congress is not remotely the public-spirited institution painted by eight-grade civics books. It is grossly incompetent (think about this year's budget), inefficient to the point of obsolescence, largely composed of men of no experience in, and little knowledge of foreign affairs, and chiefly interested in re-election.
-Fred Reed, Air Force Times, 17 December 1990

"The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing, and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without comment." -Theodore H. White

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

"There are three ways of losing money: Racing is the quickest, women the most pleasant, and farming the most certain."
- Lord Amherst

"There are no secrets to success. Don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, and learning from failure." -General Colin Powell

"I don't know how to make a light bulb, but I know six hundred ways how not to do it." -Thomas Edison

"These people - who do they think they are, saying that their government has stamped out human freedom?" -Bill Clinton, 1 May 1995

Empowerment: The right to tie a knot in the sling into which your ass is placed. -Unknown

"Life is not a child-proof daycare center, with no toy guns, run by Kate and Allie." - Wise Man

Powerpoint absorbs huge amounts of time that management, marketeers, and other suits might otherwise spend doing real harm. -Unknown

Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche. -Unknown

"We're having a hard time figuring out who has replaced Strategic Air Command."
-Col Tom Distelhorst, Nuclear Weapon System Safety Group Chairman

"Darwin's theory of safety; accidents take care of the stupid." -Major Terry Landis

"If it don't make sense, somebody's making money." -Sparky

"For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill." - R. Clopton

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares are destined to plow for those who don't" -Unknown

The Chernobyl Syndrome: The damage caused by the mistake is directly proportional to the length of time it is hushed up. -Moscow News, April 1989

Collective responsibility means, effectively, that there is none. -Paraphrased from Piers Paul Read in "Ablaze".

"The hands that help are better than the hands that pray." -Robert Green Ingersoll

"Religions are all alike; founded upon fables and mythologies." -Thomas Jefferson

"The average fighter pilot, despite the sometimes swaggering exterior, is very capable of such feelings as deep love, affection, intimacy, and true caring. These feelings just don't include anyone else." -Anonymous

"One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is." -Frank Herbert

"Yeah, I know, I know, but we all have our pet peeves, and one of mine is equating the calligraphy pen you get with the average UNIX-esque shell to the broken, blunted crayon DOS gives you." - John Buttery

"However, I can count the number of companies that became successful by partnering with Microsoft on one finger (Intel). If you shake hands with Microsoft, you better count your fingers afterwards." - Travis H.

"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage

"Outlook Express is actually an incredibly effective virus distribution system which only pretends to be an email program."
-Eric Lee

"Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level." -Enrico Fermi

"It's an XK Red 27 Technique"
-Harvey Manfredchenjensen

If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
-Ann Edwards-Duff

"I just love the French. They taste like chicken!"
-Hannibal Lecter

"I sympathize with your situation. Your species' reproductive arrangements are overcomplex. Such strong attachment to females can only lead to continuing tragedy."
-From the book "Man-Kzin Wars IX"

"There's a fine line between inspired and obsessed." - From Sun of Suns by Karl Shroeder

Low Flight 

Oh, I have slipped the surely bonds of earth
And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades
Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of
Non-paved terrain;
And done a thousand things you would never care to-
Skidded and dropped and flared
Low in the heat-soaked roar.
Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic
and lost the race to insignificant headwinds;
Forward and up a little in ground effect
I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns
Where never Fighting Falcon nor Eagle flew.
Shaking and pulling collective, I've lumbered
The low untrespassed halls beneath victor airways,
Put out my hand, and touched a tree.