• Benjamin
  • Dec. 10, 2005, during a conversation on dreams: "I think dreams are nighttime entertainment for your brain."
  • Jan. 22, 2006: "Dreams are pretty unstable things."
  • Quoting Einstein: "Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

    Original jokes:

  • 2007: "How do Vikings communicate? Norse code"
• Sarah
  • about 4 years old, while watching clouds out the kitchen window: "The clouds are like in the Spirit movie. Spirit is in front. Clouds are making Spirit and the other ones they're going to your and mommy's grandma's houses."
  • 8 years old, while I'm eating ice cream with the kids after we had painted the porch: I (innocently) asked, "I'm covered in paint, caramel, and ice cream; what does that make me?" Sarah: "A dad."
• Rita Rukashaza
  • NATALIE'S LAW OF ALGEBRA: You never catch on until after the test.
  • ANDERS'S THIRD NEGATIVE PRINCIPLE OF COMPUTERS: Making a backup disk ensures that you will never use it.
  • HALDANE'S LAW: The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it's queerer than we can imagine.
• Student in CS/SE 343, Fall 2002:
  • "Mountain Dew is great - you can drink it warm or cold."
• Grady Booch:
  • said "Bjarne Stroustroup, the inventor of C++, says that our civilization runs on software" in http://www.fawcette.com/dotnetmag/2003_02/online/lthe/default.asp
• Pete Schumacher
  • Summer, 1996, paraphrased: "If it's not tested, it's broke."
• Phil Wagner
  • June 27, 2003: "Pragmatism can be a very bad asset."
• Rob Hasker
  • July 19, 2003: "Taking an exam without having done any practice exercises is like going on a date without taking a shower."
• Joe Clifton
  • Sept. 3, 2003: "The only thing worse than counting beans is counting them wrong."
  • 2006, on birthdays: "Having them is a lot better than not having them."
• Ellen Parr
  • "The cure for boredom is curiosity.
    There is no cure for curiosity."
  • Other quotes on curiosity
• Scott Nykl
  • June 24, 2004: "Providing [computer] tech support for your neighbors is like feeding a stray dog."
• Johannes Kaufmann
  • Sept. 28, 2007: "Linux without grep would be crap."
• John Christianson
  • June 7, 2008: [When you feel left out] "like a dog at a squirrel party."

Books

• Terry Pratchett
  • Thud!, Harper-Collins, 2005; thoughts of Sam Vimes:
    • "Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoued him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves."
    • p. 183: "Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self."
  • Feet of Clay, Harper-Collins, 1996
    • pp. 66-67: "Rumor is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows--sometimes it doesn't even need people. It can exist free and wild, roaming from ear to ear without ever touching lips."

Quotes from other materials

• Dan Ingalls, Byte Magazine, 1981: "An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one."