There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and (will) be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

I write to discover what I know.

If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever made it.

To do the same thing over and over is not only boredom; it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Not I but the world says it: All is one.

If your cloak was a gift, I appreciate it; if it was a loan, I'm not through with it yet.

We have complicated every simple gift of the gods.

I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

If God lived on earth, people would knock out all his windows.

We're going to have to shit or get off the fan.

Bartlett's Law: There are no technical problems in building computer systems, just sociological problems.

It is cheaper and more productive to design machines to fit men rather than try and force men to fit machines.

You can't make a centipede by gluing ants together.

The trouble with structured programming is that your next job is in RPG.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like your thumb.

Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

If you don't believe it [your program] is correct before you start testing, what could possibly convince you?

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Humility is the hallmark of the experienced programmer.

Put out fires during the daytime. Do your real work at night. Sleep is just an addiction.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

The amount of effort necessary to achieve perfection goes exponential as you approach it; one must settle for a position on the curve that gives a high value/effort ratio.

The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

Horsemen who hold the reins of their horse have no seats in the grandstand at the race course.

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for.

The only phrase I've ever disliked is, “Why, we've always done it that way.” I always tell young people, “Go ahead and do it (another way). You can always apologize later.”

Danforth's 1st Law: If you can't laugh with them, laugh at them.

Common sense isn't.

Delicacy: that which must be eaten with the fingers to avoid staining the fork.

Reality is therapy.

A person does not choose his fate; he only fulfills it. He is bound by his fate as long as he accepts the values that determine it.

When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and remedies his incompetencies.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.

Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if they wait around.

Don't resist the resistance.

If you can't cope, get stronger!

We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it?

All the talent in the world is useless without perseverance.

If you're stuck in a painting, then stop and draw something else. Draw a flower and put your love into that flower. Then your powers will come back again.

For long I feared time, Lord, I who knew that it must take away my lover's strength and my beauty. But after Pwyll died I learned to bless it because now it had done its worst and could only bring me nearer to him. But when I had blessed it my vision changed, and I saw that it was a teacher as well as a destroyer. I saw that, great as was my love and Pwyll's, I must not make a prison of its memory, a walled place, shutting others out. For every walled place is truly a small place, cramping the body and the spirit. And every man and woman is worthy of love, and each calls forth a love that can be given only to himself or herself, never to another. And I remembered you, and knew that I loved you, and by that loving I need not cease to love Pwyll. It is hard to make it clear, that lesson.

Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun, like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

Pooh's Law: The minute you decide you're never going to find love, it will sneak up behind you, breathe tenderly down the back of your neck, and when you turn around, sock you in the face.

Romantic love was invented to manipulate women.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

In February of 1974...I asked a Vietnamese journalist who had lost his wife and three children in the Christmas bombing of 1972 how he had withstood madness, living as he did under continual bombing. “Yes, we live with fear and death,” he replied. “But we do not fear each other. I have heard about your cities, where people live alone with many locks on their doors, and no one is safe on the streets at night. Here, death can come from the sky, but we leave our doors unlocked. Which is worse, to hate and fear the enemy, or to hate and fear each other?”

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

As Northern Ireland showed us, terrorists can only be defeated when they lose the support of the people. Resolving political, economic and social grievances is therefore a far more important aspect of counter terrorist wars than direct military action, which often adds to the numbers of people prepared actively to support the terrorists.

The only way to stop it [terrorism] is to work with the leaders of Islamic nations to insure that tolerance of other religions is taught again, that their people believe they have fair opportunities to participate in government and the economy, and that the social and cultural conditions that breed hatred are bred out.

Truly men hate the truth; they'd liefer meet a tiger on the road.

But women are always attracted to power. I do not think there could ever be a conqueror so bloody that most women would not willingly lie with him in the hope of bearing a son who would be every bit as ferocious as the father.

That's when vivisection's not a crime—it's an obligation.

In a sick world even the hale are sick.

Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I knew people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

Hysteria is a chaotic and irrational emotional state caused by seeing how the world really operates.

Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience; the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to tame the pig, but also to render it invisible.

The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Thank God for secular humanism.

When Prime Minister Nakasone visited President Reagan, he asked for the auto import restrictions to be rescinded, saying “We've had a rougher time of it; consider Hiroshima.”

The Gipper was nonplused. “What has that got to do with it?”

“Well, we've never destroyed one of your cities,” replied Nakasone.

Quickly Haig cut in: “What about Detroit?”

The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

Patience is a virtue best left to the dead, who can afford it.

A lump in the throat is worth two on the head.

I talk to myself because I like dealing with a better class of people.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past---they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.

You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter.

Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.

...in some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.

We choose—or choose not—to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain cave is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his “forest books,” and the winds—messengers of the Increate—are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone because there are none but enemies and victims around him.

God is a polytheist.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

“You're a little cracked.”

“Even a little crack will let in a little light.”

Don't force it, use a hammer.

Who was the anthropologist who thought the Ojibway believed all rocks were alive? A chief had straightened him out: “Open your eyes,” he said, “and you'll see which rocks are alive.”...American anthropology is like virgins writing about sex.

The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious—and justified in that response—but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll—and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music.

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad.

Know the enemy
Know yourself
A thousand battles
A thousand victories

I can't argue with that. I don't know what you're talking about.

The bonds of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, sometimes three. [Moms Mabley] Or four, or five.... [Della Reese]

It's not polite to talk with your foot in your mouth.

There's nothing like a good man to confound a bad woman.

The nice thing about having your body as your temple is, you get to worship as you please.

We're all in this alone.

Knowledge of the law is no excuse.

The wise duck keeps his mouth shut when he smells frogs.

Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting.

The cuckold needs no reminder of his horns, and the reject no reminder of his failure.

And the Ring is so heavy, Sam. I begin to see it in my mind all the time, like a great wheel of fire.

You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that my own tears
Do scald me like lead.

The bomb has already dropped, and we are the mutants.

“Is it true God answers all questions?”
“Yes...sometimes the answer is no.”

Recursion is self-explanatory.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Man should rule with computers, not vice versa.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

Woe to him who seeks to pour oil on the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor!

Television is called a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.

In magnificentia naturae resurget spiritus.

Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts when you have lost sight of your goal.

I believe you should put a woman on a pedestal—high enough to look up her dress.

Would someone who runs flatworms be a disciplanarian?

“Why don't you ask Dr. Bronowski? He knows everything.”
“Seems like that would take all the mystery out of life.”

Knowledge that is not used is dangerous.

Learning is not compulsory...neither is survival.

During the last century a seven-year-old boy, Harry Service, was lost from his family's home in Manitoba and lived for two weeks with a badger in its underground den. When he was found he said that the badger had brought him food several times....

Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.

Tact: the ability to tell someone to go to hell and have him look forward to the trip.

I went over to the fire to get warm but it was too hot.

In the depths all becomes law.

Resolve to be always beginning—to be a beginner!

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each shall stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.

The great lie of capitalism is that human labor exists to feed the future rather than to nurture the here and now.

The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.

The state is the great fiction by which everyone expects to live at the expense of everyone else.

We all have strength to endure the misfortunes of others.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Old people like to give good advice as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples.

Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that.

Expect everything, and the unexpected will never happen.

One man's slime is another man's penicillin.

“The straight tree is the first to be cut down; the well of sweet water is the first to be exhausted. Your aim is to embellish your wisdom so as to startle the ignorant, and to cultivate your person to show the unsightliness of others. A light shines around you as if you were carrying with you the sun and moon, and thus it is that you do not escape calamity....”

“The perfect man does not seek to be heard of. How is it that you delight in doing so?”

Confucius said, “Excellent.” Thereupon he took leave of his associates, forsook his disciples, retired to the neighborhood of a great marsh, wore skins and haircloth, and ate acorns and chestnuts. He went among animals without causing any confusion among their herds, and among birds without troubling their movements. Birds and beasts did not dislike him; how much less would men do so!

Housework can kill you, if you do it right.

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.

Don't keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

You can grow as much corn on a crooked row as on a straight one.

The greatest wizard would be the one who bewitched himself to the point of accepting his own phantasmagorias as autonomous apparitions. Wouldn't that be our case?

People who want a sane, static, measurable world take the first aspect of an event or person and stick to it, with an almost self-protective obstinacy, or by a natural limitation of their imaginations. They do not indulge in either deepening or magnifying.

One of the chief sources of cultural paranoia is the ever-widening rift between the beliefs of people and their actual behavior, and the tacit assumption among these same people that this practice—this contradiction between idealism and practice—is a normal state of affairs.

Gestorben ist nicht, was für ewig ruht; und mit unbekannten Äonen mag sogar der Tod noch sterben.

None have ever shown themselves more skillful than the Japanese in licking off the bait of knowledge and leaving the hook of fanaticism standing naked.

Ignorance and greed are part of the evolutionary process, which is just to say that mistakes are part of learning. There is nothing bad about behaviors or perceptions that do not work; they simply have to be given up and replaced by behaviors or perceptions that do work.

Robert Anton Wilson: What can the average man or woman do to achieve the total success of our species and stave off the dangers we've mentioned?

Buckminster Fuller: Live with integrity.

RAW: Is that all?

BF: It is both necessary and sufficient.

A small amount of power corrupts a small man absolutely. A little knowledge is dangerous to a little man. To a great man only great knowledge is dangerous.

When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; and passersby can bean you with a ball.

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Three moves equals a fire.

[The First Amendment] means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can...pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can [they] force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.

He can't be alone, because the company is so bad.

Eighty-eight percent of all people are mental cases.

Three rules for managers:

1. Open up your territory.
2. Assume you will make mistakes.
3. Always complain upwards, not downwards.

White's Rule: The magnitude of any non-trivial task can only be known after the information has ceased to be of any practical value.

There are very few problems in computer science that are not susceptible to brute force.

User-friendly, my ass.

Murphy's Law: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it (or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").

Sometimes I feel like a fodderless cannon.

Every calculation based on experience elsewhere fails in New Mexico.

Lew Wallace—he wrote Ben-Herrera, didn't he?

Linda Martinic: I've got some live beets here and some dead beets.

Steve Senn: The only good beet is a dead beet.

Tools may limit the user, but the utility of tools is limited by the skill of the user.

A man becomes what he does.

Keep a stiff upper chin.

There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.

All rising to great place is by a winding stair.