A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
Absolute brain size does not tell you everything- or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn't have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.
Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be.
Brain cells last as long as you do. You are issued with a hundred billion or so at birth and that is all you are ever going to get. It has been estimated that you lose five hundred of them an hour, so if you have any serious thinking to do there really isn't a moment to waste.
Cheapness is a great virtue.
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield.
Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.
Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.
I assume he was descended from apes like all the rest of us, but clearly in his case it had been a fairly gentle slope.
I don't think for a moment that Americans are inherently more stupid or brain-dead than anyone else. It's just that they are routinely provided with conditions that spare them the need to think, so they have got out of the habit.
I'm a great believer that you had to do everything you've done to have got to where you are.
In any area of human endeavour, there is going to be mediocrity. You're going to find people who get money that they shouldn't get.
In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.
It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.
Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling, and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
Let's be frank, the Italians' technological contribution to humankind stopped with the pizza oven.
Life just wants to be; but it doesn't want to be much.
My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.
My first rule of travel is never to go to a place that sounds like a medical condition and Critz is clearly an incurable disease involving flaking skin.
Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.
Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.
The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know.
The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.
There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.
There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.
There are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.
There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it.
To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you... They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.
Very little of what America does is actually bad, and I don't think it ever does anything anywhere that is intentionally bad. I mean, sometimes we make mistakes and bad judgments and kind of back the wrong regimes and things, but by and large what America does is really good.
We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.
Found 34 occurence(s) in 52,059 quotation(s).
Categories: Quotes of the day
KGB Quotation Database Search page design and software
contributed by Rafal Sulejman.
