h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I like quotes. These are a selection of quotes that mean something to me. Some are humourous. Some have deep and important meaning. Some have both. None are intended to offend, but may question your beliefs.

"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"Stalin, Kruschev and Brezhnev are travelling on a train. The train breaks down. 'Fix it!,' orders Stalin. They repair it but still the train doesn't move. 'Shoot the guilty ones!' screams Stalin. They shoot everyone but still the train doesn't budge. Stalin dies. 'Rehabilitate everyone!' orders Kruschev. They are rehabilitated, but still the train won't go. Kruschev is removed. 'Close the curtains,' orders Brezhnev, 'and tell everyone we're moving!'"
"DRUNKENNESS, noun: A temporary but popular cure for Catholicism." - Charles T Sprading
"An ageing man living alone in South Armagh, whose only son was in Long Kesh Prison, didn't have anyone to dig his garden for his potatoes. So he wrote to his son about it and recieved the reply, 'For Christ's sake, don't dig the garden up, that's where I buried the guns.' At 4a.m. the next morning a dozen British soldiers turned up and dug the garden, but didn't find any guns. Confused, the man wrote to his son telling him what happened, asking him what to do now? The reply: 'Now just put the potatoes in.'" - Anon, Leeds Other Paper, December 1990
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." - Annie Dillard
"Babies simply have no concept of the fundamentally fractal nature of reality" - Mandelbrot
"If everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane."
"In communism, man exploits man, while with democracy the reverse is the case."
"Always remember that you are unique. Just like everybody else."
"Morituri non cognant" - Those who are about to die ... just don't know.
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable ... There is another theory which states that this has already happened." - Douglas Adams
"Those who live as if there was no afterlife will gain nothing if they are proved to be right and will lose everything if they are proved to be wrong. Those who live as if the present influences the next world have lost nothing if they are proved to be wrong, and will have gained everything if they are proved to be right." - Blaise Pascal
"The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it" - Franklin P. Jones
"Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again." - F. P. Jones
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." - A. Whitney Brown
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." - Irving Caesar
"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations." - David Friedman
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." - Eric Hoffer
"I know Kung Fu, Karate, and 47 other dangerous words." - Jo Ramos
"There are two essential basic strategies for success in business: 1. Never reveal all you know."
"Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." - Carl Zwanzig
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"To get rid of an enemy, one must love him." - Leo Tolstoy
"Middle age is when your age begins to show around your middle." - Bob Hope
"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." - W. McAdoo
"Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures." - S. Johnson
"Windows 95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operation system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition."
"Common-looking people are the best in the world; that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them." - Abraham Lincoln
"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing that they like." - Abraham Lincoln
"Do not be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm with two small jumps." - David Lloyd George
"Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."
"A cure for believing that prisons work is to go and visit one." - Andrew Adonis, The Observer newspaper
"In a world without fences and borders, who needs windows and gates!" - e-mail signature
"Armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918, and since then we have had two minutes of peace every year." - From a schoolgirl's essay
"Violence has no place in our society. Anyone who preaches violence should be shot like a dog." - Heard on KGO Radio, San Francisco
"A poster read: 'God is dead' - Nietzche. The graffiti underneath read: 'Nietzche is dead' - God."
"A black man was sitting on the doorstep of a white church in South Africa, weeping. Christ comes up to him and asks him why he is crying. 'They won't let me in.' 'I know exactly how you feel,' the Lord sympathises, 'I haven't been able to get in there for years myself.'"
A Rumanian asked for permission to emigrate to England. 'What's the matter?' asked the official. 'Hasn't the state given you a comfortable flat?' 'I can't complain.' 'Haven't you got a good job?' 'I can't complain.' 'Then why on earth do you want to emigrate to England?' 'Because there I can complain.' - Told in God's Underground - Richard Wurmbrand
"One person cannot change the world, but you can change the world for one person." - Tearfund employee
"Beaten paths are for beaten men."
"How can I change the world if I can't even change myself?" - Salva Mea - Faithless
"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less" - Nicholas Butler
"Corruption, the most infallible sympton of constitutional liberty." - Edward Gibbon
"Diplomacy is to do and say ... The nastiest thing in the nicest way" - Isaac Goldberg
"A beggar can never be bankrupt."
"Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average man."
"The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil; he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear." - William Inge
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." - Edward Phelps
"One on God's side is a majority." - Wendell Phillips
"The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature - a type nowhere at present existing." - Herbert Spencer
"Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?" - Edward Thurlow
"If you live a lie, you'll die a liar" - Cerys Mathews, Catatonia

Ah, the last one. I made Beth a tape recently and put "Post Script" on it. Favourite song from EC&B.

Nice piccies, by the way!!!

Shawn.

I was a little disappointed by EC&B to tell the truth. I like Dead from the waist down, and Londinium, and I think Karaoke Queen is exceptionally good, but the others were a little plain.
Still, they're by far the best Welsh band

Kind sirs, your list of quotes seems to be a bit testosterone-heavy. Let me fix that....

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."--Gloria Steinem

"The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."--Lily Tomlin

"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man."--Erica Jong

"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."--Susan Sontag

"Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths."---Lois Wyse

"In part, she objected to the monotony of nine-to-five, the tedium, the hours and days you ended up wishing away, swinging from one Saturday morning to another like a monkey at the zoo. In part, it was the anonymity: Forget what dreams you'd dreamt the night before, forget the adoring eye that beheld you over breakfast, or even the grief that had been wringing out your soul all night long, because the way she saw it, once you boarded the subway or the bus or joined the crawling stream of automobiles or found your space in the revolving door, the elevator, behind the desk or the counter or the machine, you became what you really were--you became, when you got right down to it, what you really were: one of the so many million, just one more."--Alice McDermott (Ok, so it's not quite a quote, more of a scene... but it's a good excuse to not want to go to work)

"Life's for us to enjoy, woman man, girl and boy. Feel the pain, feel the joy. It's all simply little bits of history repeating."--Shirely Bassey (but I'm not sure she wrote it...)

"Take your hat off, boy, when you're talkin' to me...."--Tanya Donelly (Belly).

"Meow"---Alice the cat.

And so to bed...

Did Alice say anything about me...? Apart from "mieow"...?

Oh, that song by Shirley Bassey...? It was written by Alex Gifford of The Propellerheads.

I'm such a swot.

billypilgrim & Shawn.... is there any reason why whenever one of you posts in a forum, the other one immediately follows?!
I don't mind, I'm just curious...

I suppose that should be a relatively easy answer, Ian, but it's made complicated by the fact that Shawn lives in England and I live in the States. So it turns into a bit of a long story... and I have to be at my mom's for dinner in an hour, and I still need to shower. The short part of it would be that he posted on H2G2 before I did, so I occasionally check his homepage to see who he's been talking to, and if it interests me, I jump in (because I can't keep my mouth shut when I have something to say.)

So the long story will need to wait til I have more time.

I like travel (I live in Hertfordshire). I bought a PC and wanted to justify the purchase. I put my name down in www.penpal.net and Beth was one of the respondants. I crashed a car in Australia on this trip (1998, October and November) so I had a lot of time to talk when I got back home. It's nearly our first anniversary. We met this October in New York (she's from Pennsylvania). I'm going over again in February.

Care to add anything, Beth...? Beth...?

One small thing, Shawn: You, as a man, have a different perspective, I'm sure. But please be careful which of my personal details you post on-line, where any nutter can find them. I don't care to open my door one day to someone with a fetish for chainsaws, or anything....

nice story
Don't worry, I have no psychotic tendencies at all. (though most of my friends would dispute that...)

Oh, I realize you have no psychotic tendencies... but do you have a chainsaw fetish...? Hahaha.

So... I hope I didn't reveal too much about your hammer fetish and love of wildlife... (cough)

Chainsaws? Oh, no, no, not at all...

*Peregrin subtley covers his 'I Love Chainsaws' badge*

So YOU were the one in my closet making all that noise!!!!

Right. Off to do that Christmas shopping.

This is all getting very silly !!!

Oh, Beth...? No gloves for Christmas. I have nice gloves. Thanks !!!

CHRISTMAS LIST:

Shawn----fuzzy mittens (pink or yellow...?)

Peregrin---- power tools to enhance his sex life.

Gary Glitter------ pre-adolescent girl

Bill Gates---- iMac computer

Bill Clinton--- cigars

Off I go, then.

Pink, please. Matches my coat !!!

I decorated our house today. I had to buy _new_ decorations too. It adds up.

I want to buy some for work... I can't find the decorations we had last year and the office looks a bit barren in comparison to some shops in the town.