Quote Monster

View All Available Quotes

Get Quotes

Showing 20 rows.

"Cutting through the acronyms and argot that littered the hearing testimony, the Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion.

True it is that many find some of the speech on the Internet to be offensive, and amid the din of cyberspace many hear discordant voices that they regard as indecent. The absence of governmental regulation of Internet content has unquestionably produced a kind of chaos, but as one of plaintiffs' experts put it with such resonance at the hearing:

What achieved success was the very chaos that the Internet is. The strength of the Internet is that chaos.[23] Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.

For these reasons, I without hesitation hold that the CDA is unconstitutional on its face."

Judge Dalzell, U.S. District Judge, quoted from Excerpt from the Conclusions of Law from the 1996 ALA/ACLU vs. Reno case.

Category:Think

"Rosenblum noted that while legislators do pray, and 'In God We Trust' is printed on U.S. coins, prayers are not allowed in school.

Judge Dennis responded, 'There is prayer every day in school." He said he prayed before tests at the University of South Carolina Law School, "but the state of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina was not telling me to pray.'"

None, quoted from Quoted from ACLU Newsfeed, 8/8/97

Referring to a case in South Carolina concerning the posting of the 10 Commandments outside of a town's Council chambers.

Category:Think

Any content-based regulation of the Internet, no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village to roast the pig.

Justice Stevens, quoted from U.S. Supreme Court majority decision, Reno v. ACLU (June 26, 1997)

Category:Think

The latest poll indicates that 72 percent of the American public believes we should withdraw economic aid from Nicaragua. Of those who expressed this opinion, 28% thought Nicaragua was in Central Asia, 18% thought it was an island near New Zealand, and 27.4% believed that Africans should help themselves, obviously confusing Nicaragua with Nigeria. Moreover, of those polled, 61% did not know that we give economic aid to Nicaragua, and 23% did not know what economic aid was.

Neil Postman, quoted from Amusing Ourselves to Death

Quoted from Michael Hanson's Web Page

Category:Humor For All

I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers. . . . I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.

Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler, quoted from Lies My Teacher Told Me

Category:Think

Miller, as far as anyone knows, has neither a womb nor a child of his own. But he does have a jump shot and a microphone, which probably qualify [sic] him to speak on the subject of family values as much as, say, Dick Morris.

San Francisco Examiner columnist Gwen Knapp, quoted from ESPNet SportsZone, Mark Kriedler's column entitled, How do you spell trouble? A-G-E-N-T

In reference to comments made by Reggie Miller (of the NBA Indiana Pacers) that WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes should stay at home and take care of her infant son instead of returning to basketball

Category:Humor For All

I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! . . . I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD.

William Lloyd Garrison, Abolitionist, quoted from The premier issue of the Liberator

The Liberator was Garrison's most famous abolitionist paper.

Category:Historical

I like the Bible. I like it as a book, just as I like Cat in the Hat.

Marilyn Manson, quoted from Politically Incorrect, aired 1/3/98, WPVI-TV 6, Philadelphia

Paraphrased, as close as I could remember -- Sujal

Category:Humor For All

I am Pentium of Borg
Division is Futile
You will be approximated.

Anonymous, quoted from Email Signature

Referring to the divide flaw in early Pentium processors.

Category:Humor For All

You know, I've grown afraid of heights as I've gotten older. When I was growing up, there was what seemed to be a never-ending construction project behind my house, as rows of new condos grew up out of the woods. One of my favorite activities was to explore the shells, marking each week's progress towards completion, and the subsequent disappearance of my easy access to the structure. I used to nimbly climb to the upper floors of the unfinished townhouses, unaided by staircases which still resided only on paper, or ladders which disappeared each day with the workmen at five. Making my way to the upper levels using only the building's structural supports seemed supremely facile, causing me to secretly disdain those who did not share my reckless confidence that the way was safe.

Tonight, standing on a deck jutting out over the James River from Browns Island, looking down at a series of iron footholds leading below to a narrow ledge on one of the supporting columns, I was confronted with the fact that this juvenile desire to climb and explore, headless of danger, was gone. After sizing up the steps required to reach the ledge-- a simple matter of swinging one leg over the railing, establishing a foothold before bringing the rest of my body over, and then finding the footholds with my feet and descending-- I suddenly realized that the very thought of such an action made my heart race and anxiety well up within me.

Confidence about my sense of balance when poised high above the earth isn't the only thing that seems to have disappeared with age. Gone also is the simple belief that I could do anything I wanted; that I could get into any school I wanted; and that I would not only easily find a job, but find one that I wanted. Now, I seem to be the first person to believe I can't do any of that. Something tells me the younger me had the better idea.

A Friend

Category:Think

Philosopher Martin Heidegger once defined truth as 'that which makes a people certain, clear, and strong,' and American history textbooks apparently intend to do just that, at least for conventional European Americans. Before we abandon the old 'correspondence to fact' sense of truth in favor of Heidegger's more useful definition, however, we may want to recall that he gave it in the service of Adolf Hitler.

James Loewen, quoted from Lies My Teacher Told Me

Category:Think

Unforunately, marketing textbooks is like marketing fishing lures: the point is to catch fishermen, not fish. Thus many adopted textbooks are flashy to catch the eye of adoption committees but dull when read by students.

James Loewen, quoted from Lies My Teacher Told Me

Category:Humor For All

Mark Twain, after getting an honorary degree at Johns Hopkins, offered the university a little advice. 'The public is sensitive to little things,' he wrote, 'and they wouldn't have full confidence in a college that didn't know how to spell John.'

JHU factoid

Category:Humor For All

'I am jobless', wailed the devil. 'I used to mislead people from the path to God, now the priests and the brahmins have taken over.'

Anonymous, quoted from Email Signature

Category:Humor For All

The ship surrounds him and bears him through space, and protected by her, he sleeps.

And dreams of Iowa.

He is a young boy. He runs with his dog through fields of grain, full of the smells of things growing, and of life.

At night, he feels his father's hand, rough in his, as they walk into those fields.

The boy looks up and gasps to see the sky so black, the stars so brilliant. His father names them, magic to the boy's ears, to his eyes, to his heart, to something within him that he does not yet understand.

Rigel, his father says. Aldeberan, Antares.

Yes, the boy says. He has never heard them before but he is certain that he knows them all. The names continue, the grain is forgotten. His mother waits in the house nearby, lights blazing through windows brilliant as the stars.

But the boy looks up. I want to go there, he says, reaching out to them. His father's face is uplifted, too, feeling the heat of a thousand suns, seen and unseen, known and unknown.

The boy is five years old and feels a pain in his chest with the weight of millenia, as if the whole species had moved forward to this one instant, to this one person, driving him on.

I have to go there, the boy says. I know, his father answers. He reaches down and lifts the boy high, holding him to his chest with love, holding him to look up, just that little bit closer to the stars in his father's arms. And you will, Jimmy, you will.

The boy's heart beats faster. I will, he whispers, clutching his father, afraid of the dark and the cold of night and the distance from the house, but hungry to see more. The challenge, the promise, the love he feels. All cast in him in that one night when first he looked up and knew where his destiny lay.

That night his house surrounds the boy and bears him through the darkness, and protected by her, he sleeps.

And dreams of stars."

Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, quoted from Prime Directive

Category:Misc

I think Icon, I think Icon, I think Icon program. Point, Click, Point, Click, See how smart I am.

Anonymous, quoted from Slashdot Sig

Category:Geek Humor

Bill Gates isn't evil. He's not the problem. The roving masses of moronic brochureware IT rejects are to blame.

Anonymous, quoted from Slashdot Signature

Category:Misc

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

Anonymous, quoted from Slashdot Signature

Category:Geek Humor

Better dead than Redmond

Anonymous, quoted from Usenet Sig

Category:Misc

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Thomas Jefferson

Category:Think

Next 20

Notes on HTML 4.0 Compatibility