# Re: Quotes Thread

_Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter._  
—Ansel Adams

"Never stand between a dog and the hydrant." - John Peers  


"Never ever whittle towards yourself or pee against the wind". My grandfather.  


Those who see things only in black and white are missing the gray matter in-between -- Shoshana B.  


"To Kaylee, and her inter-engine fermentation system.” --Mal

"If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater." --Rev Book

"An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex."  
Edgar Wallace.  


In reference to the first European sighting, and naming, of the mountain by Captain James Cook aboard HMS Resolution in 1778:  
  
_‘Climbers who have had experience on Mount Fairweather are inclined to feel that Cook was the last person to see the peak.’_  
  
\--- David Bohn  
(in the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series book “GLACIER BAY / The Land and the Silence”)

"So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave." -Malcolm Reynolds

"Quantum Mechanics: the dreams stuff is made of."

What we see is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our particular method of questioning.  
—Werner Heisenberg  


"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -- Richard Feynman

"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." - H.L. Mencken

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.  
  
\---Edward Abbey  


“There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!”  
\--Richard Feynman

"There's not a lot of difference between a gold miner and a jackass; and that's not speaking kindly of the jackass". Mark Twaine (from his own experience).  
  
Jim  


"In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."  
  
\--- Carl Sagan ( from his keynote address at the CSICOP conference, 1987)  


“Please Show Respect Whatever Reason Here You May Be.”  
  
\--- Author unknown to me  
(faded, hand-lettered sign on a weathered wooden plaque standing at the entrance to the Pet Cemetery in the Presidio of San Francisco)  
  
A few of the markers therein, reproduced verbatim:  
  
“Here lies some  
Great hamsters”  
  
“Mr. Bird  
a canary  
and  
Bilbo Baggin  
white mouse  
Loved pets of  
the  
DeYoung  
children”  
  
“Frieda &  
Phred  
Finch  
Heather &  
Brandon’s  
Bird”

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.  
  
\- Freud

Courage is like a muscle.We strengthen it with use. ~Ruth Gordon

"If you have to eat two frogs, eat the big one first." -Michael Levine

From the immortal Mark Twain, commenting (in his book,_Roughing It_) about Washoe (the Carson City area and just north of there, Washoe City)  
  
_This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, now, and according to custom the daily "Washoe Zephyr" set in; a soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view. Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting to newcomers; for the vast dust-cloud was thickly freckled with things strange to the upper air - things living and dead, that flitted hither and thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling billows of dust - hats, chickens, and parasols sailing in the remote heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush, and shingles a shade lower; door-mats and buffalo-robes lower still; shovels and coal-scuttles on the next grade; glass doors, cats, and little children on the next; disrupted lumber yards, light buggies, and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating roofs and vacant lots.  
  
It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have kept the dust out of my eyes.  
  
But, seriously, a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones like sheet music, now and then blows a stage-coach over and spills the passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people there is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.  
  
The "Washoe Zephyr" is a peculiarly Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh." That is to say, where it originates. It comes right over the mountains from the West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the other side! It probably is manufactured on the mountaintop for the occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in the summer-time. Its office-hours are from two in the afternoon till two the next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea-winds blow so, there! There is a good deal of human nature in that._

"Music and the mountains; they're the greatest."  
  
\--- Jules Eichorn

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  


>   
> A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

  
That might depend on the bird.

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word. - The Trashmen, "Surfin Bird"  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZThquH5t0ow  
  
An honest man is always a child - Socrates.  


, this is a choice of music from you this Burro has not yet seen....  
  
  
  
Might as well share a quote:  
  
"On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics." - R. Feynman

For the old farts I guess they could just go with this:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UV3kRV46Zs  
  
But here's my hero:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHXXZwfGrP4  
  
And keeping with the thread:  
"You are what you eat" - (which makes me a Deep Fried Twinkie! Yum Yum!)  


"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools."  
  
John Muir

 _You don't take a photograph, you make it._ \- Ansel Adams

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section.... The Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon are national properties in which every citizen has a vested interest; they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona."  
  
Stephen T. Mather

"It is the will of the nation as embodied in the act of Congress [in setting aside the Yosemite government reservation in 1864] that this scenery shall never be private property, but that like certain defensive points upon our coast it shall be solely for public purposes."  
  
Frederick Law Olmsted

>   
>  "It is the will of the nation as embodied in the act of Congress [in setting aside the Yosemite government reservation in 1864] that this scenery shall never be private property, but that like certain defensive points upon our coast it shall be solely for public purposes."  
>   
> Frederick Law Olmsted

  
Wording similar to this saved Mono Lake and Lake Tahoe

What was Lake Tahoe saved from? My history is remiss on this one. Water use for people elsewhere? It certainly was not saved from developement.  


>   
>  What was Lake Tahoe saved from? My history is remiss on this one. Water use for people elsewhere? It certainly was not saved from developement.  
>   
> Jim

  
Nor saved from crowding.

"Planetary Awareness Rocks."  
  
~~~~ me.

**_"Anything wrong with using the trail?"_**  
  
\--- eeek

Better slather on the bug repellent.  


**_"To go where no (wo)man has been before"_** (in response to the above quote by Len & the wordy pink reproduction down below)  
  
B  


Lettuce be mas blatant:  
  
"Is there an official (or unofficial) way of getting to the top of El Cap hiking west from the top of the Yosemite Falls trail. One resource casually mentioned "Hike west toward El Cap from the top of the Yosemite Fall trail", but once again, the two trail books that I have do not mention this junction. I asked someone about it in the valley, and he mentioned that there was an "unimproved" gravelly trail that went to El Cap. Anyone know?"  
  
B  
  
"The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind" - Peter, Paul and Mary  
  
or just here:  
  
http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?1,7451,page=1  


>   
>  Lettuce be mas blatant:  
>   
> "Is there an official (or unofficial) way of getting to the top of El Cap hiking west from the top of the Yosemite Falls trail. One resource casually mentioned "Hike west toward El Cap from the top of the Yosemite Fall trail", but once again, the two trail books that I have do not mention this junction. I asked someone about it in the valley, and he mentioned that there was an "unimproved" gravelly trail that went to El Cap. Anyone know?"  
>   
> B  
>   
> "The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind" - Peter, Paul and Mary  
>   
> or just here:  
>   
> http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?1,7451,page=1

  
eeek,  
Your quotes thread just got hijacked!  
Jim

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.  


_"Big whorls have little whorls  
Which feed on their velocity,  
And little whorls have lesser whorls  
And so on to viscosity."_  
  
\--- Lewis F. Richardson  
  
[Musings on a riverbank?]

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.  
(i.e. Love the Bird)  
  
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.  
(i.e. Love the Bird)  
  
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.  
(i.e. Love the Bird)  
  
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.  
(i.e. The Bird kicks booty)  
  
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.  
(i.e. Love the Bird)  
  
It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.  
  
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.  
(i.e. Love the Bird)  
  
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.  
  
All of these quotes - Helen Keller

 _All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men._  
\--Isaac Asimov

 _People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do._  
\--Isaac Asimov

“Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!” - Leonardo  
  
“Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?” - Bob Marley  
  
"One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?'”  
“Its marvelous what you can see when you open your eyes.”  
  
"If you open your eyes you will see much more than a pink bird."

_“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”_  
  
Charles Dickens

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.  
\---Edward Abbey  


"Why did the chick-on cross the road?"  


>   
> "Why did the chick-on cross the road?"

  
Because Table Lake was on the other side.

> Quote  
>   
> 
>
>>   
> "Why did the chick-on cross the road?"
> 
>   
> Because Table Lake was on the other side.

  
Brilliant. Although I was going to get that Twinkie bill-e-g dropped.  
He can go to Loch Tablae himself. That's way too far and it's  
hot there and dusty and the water isn't nice and there are big fishy  
in the lake with sharp nasty teeths and those lilly pads will  
jump and bite you and don't mention rattlesnakes o boy don't  
even go there there will be h-e-double tootpicks to pay and the  
rocks are dirty and brown instead of a whiteish tone where is  
that glacier when I need it. O, did I mention it's really far and  
there are these big huge moundy things in between I mean  
we're in the mountains but heck I want a flat trail can't they  
just get a grader in here or something maybe some cables  
up the Piute it'd be much easier than going way up and then  
dropping down geez who the heck came up with that crazy idea  
and switch what! don't everyone know the straightest line  
between two points aint dat.. Mikey I'm with you big guy.  
I got your back or at least can you take me out of this pack  
this guy is killing me!  
  
(ok, the thread is hijacked now... dang I wish I could sticky  
that "How to get to El Cap" thread to the top)  
  
At least I got that bear outta Tahoe.  


"You will always be able to count your best friends on one hand".

"With friends like this, who needs enemies?"

"On a clear disk you can seek forever."

_I began taking pictures in the natural world to be able to show people what I was experiencing when I climbed and explored in Yosemite in the High Sierra._  
\--Galen Rowell

"Garden flowers grow larger, but field flowers grow stronger."

"You know you're old when... o crap.. I forgot" - Old Dude Mike

 _I don’t want a bunch of chicken hanging around._  
\--- Diane Lane’s character in the movie “Must Love Dogs”  
  
(Very testily telling the butcher at the supermarket why she only wants a single chicken breast and not a whole fryer: ‘Look, I’m divorced. I eat alone. Usually standing over the sink. I don’t want a bunch of chicken hanging around.’  
The out-of-context quote in the light of the YN&DF... Priceless!)  


_"If God had intended man to fly, He would not have invented Spanish Air Traffic Control."_  
—David Lister

"Nothing builds confidence better than experience" - not sure who said it but I like it

 _May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house._  
\--George Carlin

"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."  
—John Maxwell

"The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology."  
—Stanislaw Ulam

**Don't believe everything that you think.**  
  
\---- Unknown (seen on a bumper sticker near UC Berkeley)

"What do 4 brown kiwis and 2 black kiwis have in common?"

They're flightless birds?  


>   
>  "What do 4 brown kiwis and 2 black kiwis have in common?"

  
Dat EZ. "Dey aint no Chick-on"  


>   
>  "What do 4 brown kiwis and 2 black kiwis have in common?"

  
All have I.Q.s in the 140-160 range.

“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”  
—Albert Camus

"I don't think I could shoot a deer. Quayle, that's something else again. "  
—George H. W. Bush in "Who is Dan Quayle?"

_I'm not insane! My mother had me tested!_  
—Sheldon

There's no place like 192.0.0.1!  
  
\-- my bumpersticker. 

>   
>  There's no place like 192.0.0.1!  
>   
> \-- my bumpersticker. 

  


>   
> 
>
>>   
>  There's no place like 192.0.0.1!  
>   
> \-- my bumpersticker. 
> 
>   
> Haha... mine is "My other car is a cdr"

  
Shouldn't that be "There's no place like 127.0.0.1!" ?

>   
>  There's no place like 192.0.0.1!  
>   
> \-- my bumpersticker. 

  
Shouldn't that be 127.0.0.1?

"I try to live by this simple rule: Complicate things."  
—Paula Poundstone

 _Can anyone lend me  
Two eighty-pound rats?  
I want to rid my house of cats._  
  
\---Shel Silverstein ( the poem "DRATS" from his book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" )  


"Your limit is the thing you did just before the one that killed you."  
Anonymous  


 _How are two Ding Dongs tomorrow going to help me today?_  
—Howard Wolowitz

>   
>  _How are two Ding Dongs tomorrow going to help me today?_  
>  —Howard Wolowitz

  
Ewe nose there is hope for tomorrow.  


_Time is the best teacher; unfortunately it kills all of its students._

>   
> _Time is the best teacher; unfortunately it kills all of its students._

  
Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once.  
Swami Salami 2004

 _Europeans only used half as much energy per dollar of GDP, and it was clear that their lifestyle was as good as ours._  
\--- Arthur H. Rosenfeld (California Energy Commission, The Los Angeles Times, 11 January, 2010)

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.  
—M.C. Escher

"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness" -Aristotle

Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying then without money?  
—Ogden Nash

"I'm polymerized tree sap and you're an inorganic adhesive, so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of me, returns to its original trajectory and adheres to you."  
—Sheldon Cooper

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.  
—Neil Armstrong

"You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get OLD!"  
  
Nathan Burnbaum  
  
(better known as George Burns)

_The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work._  
\---- John von Neumann

 _Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them._  
—John von Neumann

 _Although I'm regarded as a dangerous radical by particle physicists for proposing that there may be loss of quantum coherence, I'm definitely a conservative compared to Roger._  
—Stephen Hawking

"If the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, he would get homesick and go back to hell again."  
—Mark Twain (with thanks to Roger Ebert for posting it tonight)

The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.  
—William Butler Yeats  
  
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.  
—Dean Martin

"To understand something means to derive it from quantum mechanics, which nobody understands."  
—Proverbial among physicists

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of entusiasm"----Winston Churchill.  
  
"An actuary is someone who wanted to be an acountant but didn't have enough personality".---unknown

"Oh Gravity, thou art a heartless bitch"  
—Sheldon Cooper

 _There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot._  
—Steven Wright

 _If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?_  
—Anonymous

>   
>  _If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?_  
>  —Anonymous

  
Reminds me of the oddball movie I once saw called "They Shoot Horses Don't They?". At the end my date and I looked rather dumbfounded at one another while I realized I just wasted the price of admission. Walked out shaking our heads, which was probably the intent of the movie.

_Everybody is somebody else’s weirdo._  
—Anonymous

 _Linux: because rebooting is for adding new hardware._  
—Anonymous

>   
>  _Linux: because rebooting is for adding new hardware._  
>  —Anonymous

  


 _It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment._  
—Ansel Adams

 _Travel is fatal to prejudice._  
—Mark Twain

 _I drove my car until the day of wreckoning._  
—Anonymous

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also talks about love. It says, Avoid if at all possible."

>   
>  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also talks about love. It says, Avoid if at all possible."

And don't forget your towel.

_“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”_  
—J. R. R. Tolkien

 _"I need to stop questioning myself... right?"_  
—Anonymous

 _"Things are never so bad they can't be made worse."_  
—Humphrey Bogart

 _What would you do if you weren't afraid?_  
\--- From the book "Who Moved My Cheese"  


_God is an iron._  
—Spider Robinson

Ishmael: _Is it real? Do you see it, too?_  
The Manxman: _We all see it. That don't make it real, necessarily._  
  
\--- From Herman Melville's "Moby Dick"

_“Parents who are always giving their children nothing but the best usually wind up with nothing but the worst”_  
—Anonymous

 _"It's Not The Heat It's the Stupidity"_  
—Anonymous

Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.  
Mark Twain.

"You are not entitled to your opinion, schmuck; You are entitled to your INFORMED opinion!"  
—Harlan Ellison

"It's called Freedom, not Free Dumb."  
—Anonymous

"I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom." —Voltaire

 _When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats._  
\---Claude Swanson ( http://lawsoflife.co.uk/swansons-law/ )  


_When releasing grizzlies, point them away from you._  
\--- Frank Craighead (a pioneer of modern radio-collaring techniques for wildlife research)

unidentifed phone repairman:  
  
'i didn't think Orientals had a sense of humor'  
  
Sgt. Nick Yemana:  
  
'are you kidding...we invented gunpowder'

In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro  
\--Thomas à Kempis

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." —Albert Einstein

A journey of a thousand miles begins with Dad saying, "I know a shortcut."

"When I was your age, we had to dial to get online." —Anonymous

 _You were doing well until everyone died._  
— "God", Futurama

 _I'd rather have friends who care than friends who agree with me._  
  
Arlo Guthrie

 _Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment._  
— Ansel Adams

 _Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge._  
\--- Charles Darwin  
  
 _One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision._  
\---Bertrand Russell  
  
[Note: the above quotes have been lifted from  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect  
Any perceived application that they may have to steadfast, isolated positions being promulgated in some recent Yos. News & Disc. threads is made at the reader's own risk.]  


_If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows._  
\--- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher  
[Preface to the book "Bird Brains/The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays"]  


When you open a can of evaporated milk, why is there still milk in the can?

_"Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken poop from chicken salad.”_ — Lyndon B. Johnson

 _I think the biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, and America has geography. In England, you can find whatever you need as long as you’re willing to go back far enough, or go and find out when it happened. In America you can find whatever you need just as long as you’re prepared to drive far enough._  
  
— Neil Gaiman

 _What does not kill me, makes me stronger._  
\--- Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols, 1888)

Why level downward to our dullest perception always,and praise that as common sense?--- H.D. Thoreau

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope. — Aristotle

You could write a law and think it's correct, and then you'd publish a bunch of papers, and eventually you'd realize that your parents are the only ones reading them and then you'd know that you were wrong. Now, on the other hand, if your friends are reading your papers, your enemies are reading your papers, and then your enemies are stealing what you've written in your papers, then you'll know that your law is correct. --- Ramamurti Shankar (physicist)

If you put your hand on a hot plate, you should say ‘Wow, these molecules are fast!’. That’s what I want you to say from now on, not ‘Ouch!!' --- Ramamurti Shankar

 _Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space._  
—Ansel Adams  


 _The news is disease in disguise, pretending to be information._  
—Vanna Bonta

 _“Ray, what you got to do is go climb a mountain...”  
  
– Jack Kerouac_