Not only I don't believe in god, I am hostile to the idea.
Physicist Steven Weinberg

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Physicist Steven Weinberg

A mind, once stretched, never returns to its original dimension.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is hard to be funny when you have to be clean.
Mae West.

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
Mae West

Having to choose between two evils, I usually pick the one I haven't tried yet.
Mae West.

Yield to temptation. It may come your way but once.
Mae West. Somehow, she manages to be formulaic and interesting at the same time.

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
Mae West

See also the Mae West Special page.

Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.
Found by physicist John A. Wheeler on a toilet wall.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life in one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself.
Never.

From "Night", by Elie Wiesel, about his first night in Auschwitz. The most powerful stuff I have read in my life. Even within "Night", which is an extremely compact, but extremely shocking book, these lines are like a sudden explosion of light. Almost hallucinatory, and practically a self-contained work of art. His other books are rather boring, though. And too bad he is such a nationalist.

I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde

One should always be in love. This is why one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde. This reminds me of a lighter I found at Ajanta one day that said in Japanese: "Love is the dawn of marriage, which is the sunset of love."

Definitive decisions are often taken in a frame of mind which is not destined to last.
Oscar Wilde

Morals are an attitude we adopt towards those we dislike.
Oscar Wilde

To have friends you have to be a friend.
Oscar Wilde

Every great man has disciples, and it's usually Judas who writes his autobiography.
Oscar Wilde

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them as much.
Oscar Wilde

You have to be deaf to wear a necktie like that.
Oscar Wilde seeing a man with a brightly colored necktie

A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde

and the most famous of them all:
I can resist anything, but temptations.
Oscar Wilde

Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde


And how about his last words?
That wallpaper is awful. One of us has to go.

I don't think it is good engineering to make lavish use of a resource simply because it's plentiful and cheap.
Niklaus Wirth
This fellow is the creator of the programming language Pascal. Microsoft, take note.

Wrong Predictions (I group these together because it would be a sin to separate them. Frank)

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Bill Gates, 1981

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marshal Ferdinand Foch, French military strategist and future WWI commander, 1911

The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.
A Pres. of Michigan Savings Bank, advising Horace Rackham (Henry Ford's lawyer) not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903. Rackham ignored the advice, bought $5,000 worth of stock and sold it several years later for $12.5 million

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
Kenneth Olsen, Pres. and founder of Digital Equip. Corp. 1977

Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on our Pacific possessions... Radio makes surprise impossible.
Josephus Daniels, former US secretary of the navy, 1922

I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.
Joseph P. Kennedy, 1936

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
Irving Fisher, prof. of economics, Yale University, Oct. 17, 1929

I think there is a world market for maybe five comp\uters.
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, in 1943, quoted in an Audi ad in the Economist.

Peter Buchmann sends some more

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899


"The wireless music box has no imaginable value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio in the 1920s


"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last one year."

--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957


The quotes are taken from:
Data Broadcasting. The Technology and the Business.
Lars Tvede, Peter Pircher and Jens Bodenkamp
Wiley and Sons, New York 1