Quotes: l

This collection maintained by and are copyright © 1991-2024, Faisal N. Jawdat, faisal@faisal.com. Please read the about page for details.

Don Ho will not emerge from the Valley of Darkness.
LL Cool J
Unless of coarse were talking about my barbies. They used to capture my brother’s GI Joe, tie him up & then take his stuff.
Karen Laake
y'know, when everyone’s wearing black, you really have to look before you randomly grab someone’s butt.
Karen Laake
Naturally, cops pick up a lot of criminal vocabulary, especially in the drug trade, where criminal words for things are the only words there are; you can say, “He was holding a deck,” or you can say, “He was holding a glassine envelope of a white powdery substance … alleged and believed to be heroin.” Crack isn’t usually packaged in vials anymore but in miniature heat-sealed plastic bags, which the dealers call “slabs.” The official and legal term for them is “slabs” as well. To make a rule of this kind of exception would lead to indictments that read, “To wit, defendant did possess one mad fat rock of yayo.”
Marcus Laffey, NYPD, The New Yorker
When’s the planned date to get everything on-line? (Yipe, somehow I’ve turned into a end-user. Shoot me now.)
J.P. LaFond
They call it “hockey” because it is played with a HOCKEY puck. If they used a Hackey Sack, it would be called “hackey”. And if it was played outdoors in the summer, it would be called “Very Shallow Water Polo”.
Scott Laiken
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.
Hedy Lamar
75 percent of the world is covered by water. The rest is covered by Troy Polamalu.
“Lambert Jersey Guy”, as quoted on Overheard in Pittsburgh
There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. There was, above all, fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift up your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once the devils will be destroyed, your miseries will be destroyed.’ It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about us, who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we participate? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. ‘The country is in danger.’ We will ‘march out of the shadows.’ ‘We will go forward.’ And history tells you how well we succeeded! We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said go ahead, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland - remilitarize it - take all of Austria, take it! We marched forward, the danger passed. And then one day, we looked around and found we were in even more terrible danger. The rites began in this courtroom, swept over our land like a raging, roaring disease! What was going to be a passing phase became a way of life.
Burt Lancaster as Ernst Janning in Judgment at Nuremberg
Never undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Edwin Land
If you haven’t already moved to Mac OS X 10.2, you shouldn’t let this litany of problems keep you from upgrading. Most of the time, Jaguar runs just as well as the car that shares its name.
Ted Landau, Macworld, February 2003
One person can make a very big difference. Most of the time, in fact, that’s the only way very big differences ever get made.
Rob Landley
That which is always within our reach is always the last thing we take; and the chances are, that what we can do every day, we never do at all.
L.E. Landon
By the way, if you ever consider getting involved in any area that requires knowledge of the symmetry of solids: just do yourself a favor and start flipping burgers.
Greg Landrum
I’ve had bowls of spaghetti that were more tightly structured than this argument.
Anthony Lane
Well in my opinion a battle never works according to plan. The plan is only a common base for changes. It’s very important that everyone should know the plan, so you can change it easily… the modern battle is very fluid, and you have to make your decisions very fast – and mostly not according to plan. But at least everybody knows where you’re coming from, and [then] where you’re going to, more or less.
Gen Dan Laner, Israeli Defense forces commander, Golan Heights, 1973
It was bad. It was kissing-your-sister bad.
Kenard Lang
Wall Street pays a lot of attention to the Internet, but the Internet doesn’t pay much attention to Wall Street.
Larry Lang
I need to have some useful applications on there to suppress my nagging concience into believing I didn’t just buy this machine to play doom on.
Mark Lang
Rare is the person who can weigh the faults of others without putting his thumb on the scales.
Byron Langenfeld
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device.
David Langford, “A Gadget Too Far”
If anyone had told me back then that getting back to embarrassingly primitive UNIX would be the great hope and investment obsession of the year 2000, merely because it’s name was changed to LINUX and its source code was opened up again, I never would have had the stomach or the heart to continue in computer science.
Jaron Lanier
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.
Cersei Lannister
goddammit, how come the only time i get quotefiled is when i mention penises?
Len Lanphar
i wish my intestines were multithreaded
Len Lanphar
If i kill my officemate, can one of you come to court and say I was in Baker or something at the time it happened?
Len Lanphar
Save the environment. And the call stack, while you’re at it.
Len Lanphar
TeX is cool. I mean, if it had legs and breasts, it would be a clfsv or something.
Len Lanphar
They should start bundling clue with the linux kernel.
Len Lanphar
I meet women who can use punctuation all the time. Perhaps you’re hanging around in the wrong places.
Nat Lanza
I’m not carrying another goddamn body for you. Find someone else to carry it to that secret hole behind your fireplace.
Nat Lanza
Iraq moves troops close to Syrian border and announces it is a military exercise. The U.S. moves Patriot missle outfit to Israel with some troops and announces it is a military exercise. My trainer told me that sometimes you can overdo the exercising.
Fred Lapides
Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.
Pierre-Simon Laplace, to Napoleon, explaining why his works on celestial mechanics made no mention of God.
When I saw him, I liked him. When I liked him, I Loved him. When I Loved him, I lost him.
Julia Lasalle
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson
The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.
Doug Larson
And writers do get net profit, and they get a whopping five percent of it. But the term net profit is actually misleading, because it suggests you will get a profit based on the net income of that film. The trick is that the studios have something they tack onto your contract called a net profit definition. So, you see, net doesn’t mean “net” and profit doesn’t mean “profit”; they might as well call it transcendental carburetor because it makes about as much sense.
Dale Lauer
When guns are outlawed, how will we handle frat boys?
Kurt Laughlin
For best results, wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with warm iron. For not so good results, drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry on roofrack.
Laundry instructions on a shirt made by HEET
If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.
Anton LaVey
The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision.
Lynn Lavner
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while, you realise the pig is enjoying it.
Jamie Lawrence
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T. E. Lawrence
consider your own movement on earth. Even if you are walking in a straight line, the earth itself is rotating about its axis and revolving around the sun, which in turn is revolving around the galaxy, which is in turn moving about the universe. So your true movement in space is nothing like a straight line. It is more like a Zig, a Zag, and then a Swirl.
Alfred Lawson
If the enemy is in range, so are you. Incoming fire has the right of way. There is always a way. The easy way is always mined. Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo. Professionals are predictable, it’s the amateurs that are dangerous. The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions: when you’re ready for them, and when you’re not ready for them. Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at. If you can’t remember, then the claymore is pointed at you. The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main attack. A ‘sucking chest wound’ is nature’s way of telling you to slow down. If your attack is going well you have walked into an ambush. Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you. Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing. Make it tough enough for the enemy to get in and you won’t be able to get out. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself. If you’re short of everything but the enemy, you’re in a combat zone. When you have secured an area, don’t forget to tell the enemy. Never forget that your weapon is made by the lowest bidder. Remember, once you pull the pin, Mr. Hand Grenade is no longer your friend. It’s not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about, it’s all those other ones labeled ‘occupant’.
The Laws of Combat
There has never been a shortage of people willing to market something-for-nothing schemes to the gullible. Over the years, there have been perpetual motion machines, gizmos that you put in the fuel line to “magnetize” your gasoline and make your Eldorado get 50mpg, and end-to-end QoS schemes.
Irwin Lazar
In England, the first book in the series was titled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” while American readers, unaccustomed to philosophy in their children’s books, were treated to “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
David Lazarus
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats - approximately one billion Chinese couldn’t care less.
Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom
It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
C.W. Leadbeater
At first glance, there’s a lot of sex on the Internet. Or not at first glance: Nobody can find anything on the Internet at first glance.
Senator Patrick Leahy
The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.
Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project
[Econometric] methodology, like sex, is better demonstrated than discussed, though often better anticipated than experienced.
Edward Leamer
It is a sin not to know why you are sinning. Pointless sin must be avoided.
Edward Leamer
The drug war is fueled by the fact that at this historic moment, when American Liberalism and free enterprise have “won” the Cold War, our politicians are suffering from enemy deprivation. Faced with the real problems of urhan decay, slipping global competitiveness, and a deteriorating educational system, Washington has decided instead to turn its energies toward the 25 million Americans who use and traffic psychoactive drugs.
Timothy Leary
There are doors that they won’t go in and they don’t want us to go in there either because they’re afraid that if we do, we’ll learn something that they don’t know, and that makes us a little out of their control.
Timothy Leary
I’ve just mastered the art of not laughing in someone’s face as I apologize for just knocking them over.
Steve “Red Steve” Ledebur
If you’re a 300 year old vampire, how comes you’re not on the guest list yet?
Steve Ledebur
It’s Faisal. He’s like the Flying Dutchman. In a suit.
Steve Ledebur
Oh - the Promise Keepers are forbidden from beating anybody … but their wives.
Steve Ledebur
You could call it “selling out”. I prefer to call it “buying in”.
Steve Ledebur
Physics is not a religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money.
Leon Lederman
It’s only occurring to me now as I write this down, but it seems that cynicism and contempt may have actually helped me out of the worst acid trip I’ve ever had. Punk rock works!
Bob Lee
There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. A man bust constantly exceed his level.
Bruce Lee
Some people only attach value to things they have to pay for. This is the businessman’s mindset. He believes in Money, with a capital M. It defines him, and his relationship with the world is interpreted in terms of the flow of cash. This is the work of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, which has long been wedged up Adam Smith’s Invisible Butt.
Jeremy Lee
If you do enough good in the world, some people will start to hate you for no reason. These people should be ignored.
Mike Lee
The most awkward part of getting a girlfriend was having to break up with all my friends’ moms.
Mike Lee
MBA alums now going B2B and B2C (back to banking; back to consulting after jumping their mother ships)
Monica Lee
See, it is a conspiracy. Eventually everybody goes obscure[.org].
Tracy Lee
I haven’t had time to read the [Java] specification and I can’t take the time for the next couple of weeks because I’m on a deadline, but I have a whole list of things I hate about C++ (I work with it every day) and I’d like to get them tossed into the ring for consideration. If these are already in the language, please flame me.
Casey Leedom
“What a great idea! No system errors. Why didn’t I think of that before?” I wondered as I performed the international gesture for “duh”.
Adam Leffler
Art consists of inventing and not copying.
Fernand L´ger
Caution. Blade is sharp. Keep out of children.
Darren Leigh
whoever came up with this idea understands the online music industry about as well as a cow understands algebra
Phil Leigh, senior analyst, Inside Digital Media
The enemy must die, for if he does not, then he won’t be dead.
from the LEGO WARS rules
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
Ursula Leguin
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda neat.
John Lehman
The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on the grounds of ability.
Tom Lehrer
I suppose it is “The Vatican Rag” ‘cause some people think it’s sacrilegious, but I don’t. However, if you think it is sacrilegious, that’s fine with me because I think all religion is nonsense. Actually, Randy Newman has a better word on his recording of “Faust” but I don’t think I can say it on the Net.
Tom Lehrer
If a person feels he can’t communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it.
Tom Lehrer
If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it.
Tom Lehrer
Many of the New York venture people come from an investment banking background. They’re looking more at the decimals. The VCs in California are counting the commas.
Josh Leibowitz
The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way…
Stanislaw Lem, “Cyberiad”
Todd, reading your quotes file after being away from CMU for 2 years is like regressing into a bad childhood.
Laura Lemay
Unless it’s a Microsoft Power User Demon Program From Hell, most mac programs are easy to pick up without looking at manuals.
Laura Lemay
I regret to inform you that the column has more words in it
Scott Lemieux
Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only the publishers who think people own it.
John Lennon
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
John Lennon
That’s the thing about the internet, everyone can know everything all the time, and nothing all at once.
Lyz Lenz
On the Net, the words 'regulation’ and ‘Internet’ are like matter and anti-matter: Put them together and you hear a loud boom, as libertarians fly in every direction, squawking furiously.
Andrew Leonard
Vigor is an adaptation of the freely redistributable “nvi” text editor written by Keith Bostic, which in itself is a descendant of the legendary (and still widely used) “vi” text editor written by uber-programmer Bill Joy one afternoon when he was momentarily distracted from his usual hobby of completely rewriting operating systems overnight.
Andrew Leonard
You can’t beat the Net for beating off.
Andrew Leonard
So far, caffeine seems Y2K compliant. 50 hours so far and I’m not the least bit paranoid, though after the 30th pot or so I decided that Mylanta makes a better creamer than skim milk. […] WHAT THE *#$& WAS THAT!? Oh…sorry.
Jason Leonard
I’m not from Pittsburgh. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m from Youngstown, which is a godforsaken cross between Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
Dan Leone
“Spooge” is an interesting new term for me! Sounds really yuky…
John Leong
I was really, really bad at writing parsers. I still am really bad at writing parsers.
Rasmus Lerdorf
I’m not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say “yeah it works but you’re leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that.” I’ll just restart apache every 10 requests.
Rasmus Lerdorf
PHP is about as exciting as your toothbrush. You use it every day, it does the job, it is a simple tool, so what? Who would want to read about toothbrushes?
Rasmus Lerdorf
When two people love eachother a very long time (six years or more), sometimes they kiss. And they kiss because they love eachother. Sometimes, after they kiss, a stork comes and brings a little baby. Of course, if you’ve only been together for 3 months, you just knocked your girlfriend up because you didn’t use a condom. Right?
Jamie Lerner
A small handgun makes any TV remote control.
David Letterman
So, last night President Clinton told his MTV audience he wears briefs. I’ll take ‘Things I Didn’t Want to Know for $500, Alex.’
David Letterman
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
Bruce Leverett, “Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers”
You know it’s Unix when the backspace key often performs an action other than deleting the character to the left of the cursor.
Raph Levien
I’ll pay you in caffene!…
Faye Levine
Advice to tourists: If you really want to enjoy your trip to Italy, spend four years in Russia first.
Irving R. Levine
If you try to calculate the equity of a balance sheet with an entry for HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT, Microsoft Clippy will appear before you in the flesh, bloodshot and staggering, with a knife in his little paper-clip hand, saying ‘just what do you think you’re doing Dave?’ You cannot apply ordinary arithmetic to numbers in a cell labeled ‘HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT.’ The result of adding or subtracting those numbers with ordinary numbers is not a number; it is prison.
Matt Levine
I was happy to note that the authors - Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner - correctly use the word data (as a plural, rather than singular noun). It’s used all over the book and their correct use of the word truly enhanced my reading enjoyment. Now I just need to figure out how to get down off this damn box without falling…
Seth Levine
Playing on the edge means being willing to go into the unknown. It means approaching that place where real growth occurs.
Stephen Levine
A small case of mood poisoning… must have been something I hate.
Eli Levitt, Wild Palms
Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, is starting his own Florida town-Ave Maria-and implied that he would be banning birth control and porn in the city. Now he’s trying to clarify. “There are a lot of misconceptions,” he told the Associated Press. Well, sure. That’s what happens when you ban birth control.
Jay Levitt
It is true that a black hat can find vulnerabilities in a binary-only application, and that they can attempt to steal the source code to the application from its closed source. But in the same amount of time they can do that, they can audit ten different open source applications for vulnerabilities. A bad guy that can operate a hex editor can probably manage to grep source code for ‘strcpy’.
Elias Levy
good. be a futurist, will you, and go get in your car, go tearing down the road way too fast, run up to him and slap him? you can say something like “art waits for no pants, bonbon!” at the end if you want.
Sean Levy
is there no accounting for taste? there isn’t even a budget for it.
Sean Levy
MySpace in the 2000s is what the malt shop was in the 1950s-if the malt shop could hold 65 million adolescents, many of whom had no qualms about showing pictures of themselves half drunk in their underwear.
Steven Levy and Brad Stone, Newsweek, Apr 3, 2006
When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Sinclair Lewis
I’ve learned not to put things in my mouth that are bad for me.
Monica Lewisnky discussing Jenny Craig weight loss on CNN Larry King Live, January 2000
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
Remember that all worlds draw to and end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.
C.S. Lewis
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. … The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and pertubations of love is Hell.
C.S. Lewis
As long as you don’t sport a goalie mask and wander around screaming: “WOMEN! WOMEN! Why have you forsaken me?” I don’t consider you psycho.
Jenn Lewis
You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough.
Joe Lewis
and the fist of darwin shall smite thy stupid ass
Marcy Lewis
This sounds really good, but i dont have a kitty, can i substitute stupid end users?
Marcy Lewis
yeah, and Safety Dance is really a symbolic statement about the alienation from life and finding depth of spirituality in dance.
Marcy Lewis
Stairways Software is now distributing my software. Don’t worry, this won’t have any noticeable effect on you for the foreseeable future since I own Stairways Software.
Peter Lewis
If you believe that mathematician Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem has caused you or a member of your family to dress too provocatively, call (800) 555-9455.
Mark Leyner, “Jenny Jones: Postmodern Critique”
Check her passport or green card. If she is from Varga, then she must be a Vargin.
Michael Lianez
History shall confirm or deny our success.
Libertis mission statement
UNIX? Hall of Shame? there’s a difference?
Libor
I was clever today. I went sledding. Except I don’t have a sled, so my butt is very cold.
Jena Barchas Lichtenstein
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
A. J. Liebling
Pat’s going to win in ‘92. I’ll see to it. I don’t care where I have to break into.
G. Gordon Liddy
Obviously crime pays, or there’d be no crime.
G. Gordon Liddy
Why is it that there are so many more horses’ asses than there are horses?
G. Gordon Liddy
During this period, US world hegemony has often been exercised-sometimes benignly, sometimes arrogantly-in a generally lazy, half-hearted, absent-minded way. One key reason for this is that as every US opinion poll and election has shown, the great majority of Americans, while proud of their “world leadership,” are also profoundly uninterested in the details of its implementation. And the reason for this is that until 8.45am on September 11th 2001, very few Americans believed in their hearts that anything the rest of the world could do could seriously harm them.
Anatol Lieven
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams
Actually, the point of a zoo is not to provide a running track. The point is to imprison animals for the amusement of sweating Iowans who have come 1500 miles to learn that the pandas are not available for viewing. You want to jog, go to Rock Creek Park, where the aroma of steaming primate offal is replaced by fresh car exhaust. Be sure to gesture obscenely at the cabs, in case they contain tourists. If all works as planned, tourism will drop to zero, and we can all play squash unhindered in the National Archives rotunda.
James Lileks
As far as pizza goes, New Yorkers rise to new levels of delusion on this score. What they call pizza has all the flavor of a manhole cover marinated in brine and topped with three atoms of sauce and a smear of cheese-flavored spackle. When I’m in New York, I call Dominos. And I call the one in Dupont Circle.
James Lileks
DC couture is notoriously ordinary, as though they have a wedding at five, a funeral at six, and have dressed for the mean. It’s because women do serious work here. New York women dress in case they will be photographed. DC women dress in case they have to testify.
James Lileks
I’ll grant that New York bagels are superb. Locals claim it’s because of the New York City water; it imparts some special flavor. I know what it is: Plutonium. In 1984 the Times reported that trace levels of plutonium had been found in local water; I was there that year, and remember the bagels as especially delicious. That’s why DC bagels are inferior: they use flavors to cover up the use of substandard ingredients, like uranium.“
James Lileks
If all goes well. Which it won’t. The Fog of Peace comes next; we will hear many stories of Setbacks and Troubling Developments and Roadblocks to Peace and the rest of the vocabulary the media deploys when a brutalized nation is freed from jail and does not immediately assume the characteristics of a Nebraska small-town school board.
James Lileks
New Yorkers never look up anyway. Tilt the head back more than 35 degrees and you might as well hang a RUBE sign around your neck. If King Kong showed up today on the Empire State building, only German tourists would notice. New Yorkers would notice only after the rotting body of the dead ape was starting to overwhelm the smell of uncollected restaurant trash.
James Lileks
So the District is nicer compared to New York. Eva Braun was probably nicer than Messalina. So? No one lives in either city because it’s nice. You live in this part of the country to make money, crush your inferiors, flatter your betters, and because the dry cleaners around here are good at getting out blood and adrenalin. You want to smell trees? Go to Minnesota. Which, incidentally, is what I did. I can snipe at everyone from here.
James Lileks
We are going to lose 51 states. Puerto Rico will demand statehood just for the chance not to vote for this guy.
James Lileks
When the remodelling contractor points out that Rome wasn’t built in a day, it is necessary to point out that Rome was, eventually, built.
James Lileks
You can say what you will about America, but it provides job security for its critics.
James Lileks
Congratulations - your GCC supports exceptions; disabling them.
Tripp Lilley
I know faisal. That alone qualifies me for several dozen high-tech jobs.
Tripp Lilley
I still haven’t forgiven you for removing my quote. … You’ve mortalized my immortality.
Tripp Lilley
I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. Oops.
Tripp Lilley
NOC: We have black helicopters.
Tripp Lilley
We can take you to the Cellar, get you all lickered up, and take advantage of your state… and your city, and your neighborhood…
Tripp Lilley
Do you know about the Eleventh Commandment? It says, "Thou shalt not bore God, or he will destroy your universe.”
John Lilly
The way to gain security, the way to hold onto our security, is to expand our freedom, and to affirm that that’s what this country is all about.
Rush Limbaugh
To constrict freedom in the interest of security is to slowly erode the very foundation on which the country is built.
Rush Limbaugh
You know why there’s a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.
Rush Limbaugh
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
Harry Lime, The Third Man
Ann Coulter is merely the latest in a dubious tradition of self-promoters who have discovered that if you say enough outrageous things, you can get yourself an opportunity to say them on television.
Rush Limerick
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Abraham Lincoln
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
Abraham Lincoln
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Abraham Lincoln
Prohibition… goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
Abraham Lincoln
The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
Abraham Lincoln
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.
Abraham Lincoln
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here…
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln
No. This is alt.gothic. The ghetto has no exit.
Natalia Lincoln
There are two rules for success: 1) Never tell everything you know.
Roger H. Lincoln
Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?
John Lingenfelter speaking of drag racing, quoted in a www newsgroup
It has been suggested that the Internet might be a good way to vote for our elected officials. If my experience is any guide, though, it appears there are still a few bugs to be worked out before you’ll be able to elect the next President while sitting at home in your underwear, unless you want Shecky Greene running the country.
John Linnell
Shut the fsck up.
Robert Linnemann
Well, way back last semester, some one claiming to be a vampire said that his species was first generated by someone drinking the blood of a dragon. Let me just say right now that this does not work. I’ve seen many humans try it over the years and none of them became a vampire. The only result they achieved was an angry dragon. And an angry dragon is not something you want to see (or so the survivors told me as they apologized). I refuse to claim to be a vampire and I refuse to understand why any human should want to do so. It is useless.
Ken Lipka
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to se its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
the Litany Against Fear, Dune
In one, Rice vs. Cayetano, the court invalidated a Hawaiian voting scheme with the very principled determination that native Hawaiians – unlike Native Americans – don’t deserve special protection. Don’t miss the heartbreaking last paragraph: “When the culture and way of life of a people are all but engulfed by a history beyond their control, their sense of loss may extend down through generations.” (And here I paraphrase:) “Oh well. It sucks to be them.”
Dahlia Lithwick
For the LAST TIME, I am not the ruler of the underworld. I told Satan and Ba'alzebub that, and I don’t have time to keep telling it to penny ante fallen angels. Now stop bothering me and go back to hell or where ever you came from.
Mark Lively
I’m sorry, I can’t have an adventure right now, my Deus ex Machina is in the shop for repairs.
Mark Lively
After my return to the good old United States, I’ve been so enmeshed in the job hunt and fast paced lifestyle (World of Warcraft) that I have let this blog become completely derelict.
Trevor Livingston
Quote! Quote! Young man, the barbarians are hammering at the gates of our civilization, and you stand there saying ‘quote’ when you mean ‘quotation.’
Prof. Charles Lloyd
I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, It’s a matter of faith, and above reason.
John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”
Security for Unix is like Mutitasking for MS-DOS
Kevin Lockwood
Now this would be the perfect time to actually steal a DECstation…
Frank “fl0p” Lofaro, waiting for security to come and turn off the alarm
i think i’m allergic to evil, maybe that’s it.
Abby Logsdon
No you don’t… you are just confused. Don’t worry, I am confused all the time. Trust me, you get used to it.
Krys Logston
It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.
Vince Lombardi
Man’s purpose is to live, not to exist.
Jack London
actually, he’s probably using batmail, which is way cooler because it and it. it also at the same it, and now features, improved, and the ability to. also, it prints out a little picture of a bat and not everyone knows how to use it.
Brian Long
You make some breaks and you get some breaks. You don’t get lucky unless you ask.
Brian Long
i don’t think you could flame a weener-dog if i gave you a stack o’ briquettes, some lighter fluid, and a small incendiary device.
Brian Long
Homework is bad. Going home is bad.
Darrell Long
It’s all right; I have to sign his thesis.
Darrell Long
Performance is pretty good; looks basically like AFS.
Darrell Long
Run time checking is for wimps. Just give me a core dump, I’ll figure it out.
Darrell Long
You should break a programmer’s fingers if they do this.
Darrell Long on self modifying code
You’re a catholic, for christ’s sake! You’re not supposed to be lenient.
Darrell Long
discussing nuking things ‘til they glow should remind us that war is always a negative-sum game. Anyone who believes it zero-sum may wish to check the ingredients list on their Koolaid.
Dave Long
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love”
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as `empty,’ `meaningless,‘ or `dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how `pure’ their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
Lazarus Long
Natural laws have no pity
Lazarus Long
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business, but –” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love”
If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Become your own news admin, and you can censor the groups *you* find offensive. comp.sys.amiga.advocacy would be my first choice.
Nathan Loofbourrow
C code and bboards are my only foods; I forsake all others, except for leaves from the Bodhi tree and water sipped from the bladder of a goat.
Nathan Loofbourrow
Clockers: The story of two brothers torn apart by murder… and by their brand spanking new color PowerMac they use to surf the World Wide Web!“
Nathan Loofbourrow
However, I have also learned my lesson. When the MessagePad says, "your batteries are running low”, it secretly means “You will replace my batteries NOW, or I will subject you to an endless series of panic-inducing restarts and crash hard, taking all of your appointments with me unless you were lucky enough to store them on the pcmcia card. Wanna find out what it feels like to not have any idea who is expecting to meet with you or what they’re expecting you to have done by then, RAT BOY?”
Nathan Loofbourrow
I had not truly experienced pop culture, and therefore had not truly understood the goal of all civilization to this day, until I heard Cher sing the phrase, “I’ve got yours, and Butthead, you’ve got mine.”
Nathan Loofborrow
I have *always* thought of Wean as just one big, huge concrete canvas.
Nathan Loofborrow
Much like the subtle way that Drew says “this thread is stupid” by parodying the thread, Eeyore is trying to tell me something along the lines of “You used to have balls back when you actually SENT snotty email to Billy Idol, instead of just talking about it.”
Nathan Loofborrow
See, I am just a frustrated artist. The sex urge feeds into the art urge which feeds into the computing urge. So I have a need to program a ray tracer to fulfill the previous two levels of abstration.
Nathan Loofborrow
Shyeah, sending email is always a sign of courage.
Nathan Loofborrow
So I saw Alive, pretty cool movie, only got Hollywood towards the end. My review is “Hmm. Tastes kinda like chicken.”
Nathan Loofborrow
Taco Bell… Walk, do not run, for the border.
Nathan Loofborrow
The NeXT machines don’t understand my needs as a man.
Nathan Loofbourrow
Welcome to the hip new Unix trend: unbundling the compiler! Sure, we’ll ship you the runtime shared library objects, but the compiler and linkable library and the include files will COST YOU DEARLY! If it weren’t for gcc (okay, apparently not on Clarknet) then Unix would be rapidly joining every other major OS in the THINGS THAT SUCK category for deciding that being able to WRITE CODE is some sort of OPTIONAL ACTIVITY. I think I’ll start a CAR COMPANY that will sell you the SERVICE MANUAL and the HOOD RELEASE LATCH as a DEVELOPER OPTION for $1395.
Nathan Loofbourrow
Well, I’m PROUD that the PC community will be able to play FAST GAMES on their machines through the GENIUS of the GAME DEVELOPMENT community. I’ll be sure to THINK OF THEM while I’m performing SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION of ARBITRARY 3D DATASETS in REAL TIME.
Nathan Loofbourrow
Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.
Sophia Loren
Let’s face it. Youth is it. It’s a national obsession, crazy cats. But somewhere, people all forget what a mess youth is. It’s a time of magic, all right, and there is nothing more unreliable or annoying than magic.
Lorne, Angel
Okay. First of all she didn’t say ‘may your words please the gods’ so much as ‘may you orally please the gods,’ which is a slight… Well, inflection is very crucial in our… Ah! God bless her. It’s always nice to hear the mother tongue – as long as it’s not from my mother.
Lorne, Angel
Oh, so you’re defending yourself, you coward!
Peter Lorre
We’re not going to review the results of 1986. The results speak for themselves. And we’re not going to recount the fairly remarkable progress that we’ve made over the past five years. Our past performance isn’t something to dwell on. It’s something to build on.
Lotus Development annual meeting brochure
ULTRIX uses the Berkeley Fast File System and the Very Slow Disk I/O.
Philip de Louraille
As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage'…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
H. P. Lovecraft
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
Don’t take VICE too seriously; It throws in random bits.
Dan Lovinger
Software Engineering is a contact sport.
Dan Lovinger
Some people have compared the security holes in this system to a hole the size that a 747 could fly through. By now, I would imagine it’s up in the range of Star Destroyer class.
Dan Lovinger
This should not be interpreted as an official response of any sort. Never mind who I am.
Dan Lovinger
I get a lot of letters like, 'Dear John, I’ve got a dead alien. What should I do with it?’ One word: barbecue!
Jon Lovitz, phone book commercial
Would you be terribly upset if I told you that there may possibly be… GUNS… in… the trunk?
Jon Lovitz, Trapped In Paradise
Thank you for your total obedience and heartfelt submission.
Clifford Low
War is human nature, as is murder and misc violence. Trying to revise human nature is the direction of our age to some degree, but it’s stupid. The current trend is to suppress or “safely channel” the human need to destroy, maim, and kill. It’s about as sensible towards violence as the Victorian era was about sex. Let’s have a rennaisance of Free Hate to supplement Free Love. Invectivism.
Clifford Low
What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
John Lubbock
First off, understand that storage devices are lying liars that lie. The newest solid state storage maintains a malformed compatibility with hard drives released in the previous century, which were built on standards designed for punch cards, which had their roots in 17th-century looms and the Luddites, so every time you plug in a storage device you’re putting someone out of work but there’s no ethical data storage under capitalism so go for it.
Michael Lucas
If I’m spending $15,000 to be a princess for a day I’m going to be Princess Leia, and there damn well better be stormtroopers firing at me.
Kathleen Luce
All the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs.
David E. Lundstrom, “A Few Good Men From Univac”
We all are milliseconds from death. It could be lots and lots of milliseconds, but milliseconds nonetheless.
Dave Lustig
BTW, if you’re going to send me a note to tell me that I’m obviously wrong, please make sure that I’m actually wrong.
Dan Luu
I have always found music during sex to be acceptionally difficult as I can never concentrate on sex AND playing the guitar at the same time. My ex played the drums and this meant that we just couldn’t get comfortable in any position where sex was possible and she could still reach the drums so we gave up.
lxd@robin.cs.nott.ac.uk
Diversity in interfaces is the only way to protect ourselves. Well, that and small caliber handguns, but only if we can actually track down the perpetrators.
Dan Lyke
While it’s obvious (to me, at least) that while the real solution to some of the environmental issues we’re facing is to at least go for zero population growth, a first step might be to work towards not growing our huge population centers in the middle of the desert and then importing the lacking resources at the expense of ecologies hundreds of miles around. This isn’t to say that there aren’t advantages for developments such as LA. Concentrating the types of people who actually like smog-filled valleys, non-native foliage and awful sprawling suburbs near fault lines is a good thing.
Dan Lyke
Who needs a computer when you’ve got balls?
Des Lynam
We are completely network agnostic. In fact, we would invest in broadband carrier pigeons if someone could find a way for them to deliver two megabits into the home.
Bruce Lynn, group manager, network solutions, Microsoft