Culture: Literature
Sayings of Confusion   (+26, -3)  [vote for, against]
A book of quotations/sayings attributed to more logical or plausible personalities:

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. - Elvis Presley

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. – Hitler outside Moscow

I think, therefore I am. – HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer)

That which does not kill you makes you stronger. – Osama Bin Laden

There is no such thing as a free lunch. – Marie Antoinette

There is no justice among men. – OJ Simpson

If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. – parrot of Long John Silver and Captain Hook

It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved before. – John Wayne Bobbit
-- FarmerJohn, Jul 03 2002

(?) HAL wordplay on IBM? http://www.urbanleg...ordplay_on_IBM.html
author of 2001, Arthur C Clarke, denies this [FarmerJohn, Jul 03 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]

(??) The wisdom of supermodels http://members.fortunecity.com/eilert2/
These are great as they stand! [madradish, Jul 04 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Sounds like something the Reader's Digest might come up with. But what an excellent Xmas gift to give to the pretentious and under-educated, as a heavily-veiled insult to their intelligence (if any). Hours of quiet malevolent sniggering as they actually regurgitate quotes from the book Gets my vote.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 03 2002


Factoid 1: The name of HAL, the computer in 2001 was derived not from "Heuristic Algorithmic Logarithmic" but by taking the letters preceding those of "IBM".
Factoid 2: Long John Silver's parrot was called Captain Flint.
Thank you.
-- angel, Jul 03 2002


excellent idea! breafast snack for you.

however, I disagree with the quote you gave OJ, try this one instead....

"There's a sucker born every minute" -- OJ Simpson
-- runforrestrun, Jul 03 2002


Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. - Leon from Resident Evil
-- sild, Jul 03 2002


" 'You're in a computer game, Max' Funny as hell, it was the worst thing I could possibly imagine" - Max Payne
-- NickTheGreat, Jul 03 2002


"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars." -- [Garrison Keillor] Harry Potter
-- fishx, Jul 03 2002


"I did not have sex with that woman" --- Boy George [Bill Clinton]

"Read my Lips...." --- Mick Jagger [the first George Bush]
-- runforrestrun, Jul 03 2002


"One time, at band camp, I stuck a fl.." -- Monica Lewinsky
-- Mr Burns, Jul 03 2002


"Things are never so bad they can't be made worse." --- George W. Bush [Humphrey Bogart]
-- calum, Jul 03 2002


"It takes two people to tell the truth; one to say it and one to hear it." -- [Thoreau] Yasser Arafat
-- reensure, Jul 03 2002


"Live and let live." - O. J. Simpson

-- phoenix, Jul 04 2002


* "Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them." [H.L. Mencken] ----- Bill Clinton, yet again.

* "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave." [HAL 9000] ----- Paul Schaeffer.
-- polartomato, Jul 04 2002


"Que Sera Sera" ---Marty McFly
-- sappho, Jul 04 2002


Factoid 3. Captain Hook never had a parrot.

Nice one sappho. Very subtle.
I'm surprised that nobody's had a go at Bill Gates yet. I thought that it was traditional with this sort of idea. How about...

"Would you really care if one of those dots suddenly stopped moving?" (Orson Welles)
-- DrBob, Jul 04 2002


re angel's first factoid: to this day, Clarke denies that as a coincidence. And also to this day, nobody believes him.
-- waugsqueke, Jul 05 2002


Arthur C Clarke factoid: As a child and young man, he was so mollycoddled that he had to be shown, in 1952 at age 35, how to get a glass of water from the tap (faucet).
-- angel, Jul 05 2002


<pet peeve> You people are misusing the word "factoid" as though it means something like "insignificant or minor fact." A factoid is now and always has been a lie that is widely believed to be true because it was printed, as in a newspaper or periodical. So when you used the word "factoid", you were only correct when you identified the urban legend of the IBM-HAL connection as such. Thanks for listening. Sorry to disturb you. Carry on.</pet peeve>
-- globaltourniquet, Sep 08 2002


globaltorniquet, 'factoid' originally referred to a small newspaper 'filler' of unknown veracity. I see it commonly used in two different ways, both as 'something that appears to be a fact, but mighn't be' and as a 'small isolated fact'. It isn't a word I would use myself, because it isn't sufficiently precise.
-- pfperry, Sep 08 2002


gt, I have never heard of the word 'factoid' being used in that manner. I've always known it to mean 'a brief, somewhat interesting fact'.
-- waugsqueke, Sep 08 2002


Technology: No Place for Wimps! -- Bill Gates [Scott Adams]

Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances. -- Cyrano de Bergerac [La Fontaine]

All art is quite useless. -- King of the Philistines [Oscar Wilde]

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing. -- Ian Malcolm [Seneca]

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -- Morpheus of "The Matrix" [Jules de Gaultier]

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. -- Big Brother, "1984" [Laurence J. Peter]

If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. -- Dirk Gently [Laurence J. Peter]

There is no great genius without some touch of madness. -- John Nash [Seneca]

Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Deep Throat [Ron Nesen]
-- Rhetoric, Sep 13 2002


It was Bill Safire.
-- ty6, Sep 13 2002


Hmm. No fishbones until ravens had voted. That means that the auto-boner hadn't struck until that point. Hmm - ravens, I think your secret may be uncovered.
-- PeterSilly, Sep 13 2002


+1 is this a l...
-- po, Oct 24 2004


I don't recall lists being a no-no in the old days.
-- FarmerJohn, Oct 24 2004


That wouldn't matter, but it's also a real suggestion underneath the list and the gratuitious pun and penis joke.

I'm with ravenswood on this one; the reattribution of statements to more "logical" sources is already happening. You'd have to do something else to distinguish yourself from the merely accidental misattributions that abound.
-- jutta, Oct 25 2004


"He who talk much knows little, and he who talks little, knows much." - ANY politician
-- lcllam2, Oct 25 2004


I have always understood "factoid" to mean a statement which is fact-like, but unverified. That would be consistent with its morphology. A small but interesting fact would be a a "factlet".

"Never in the course of human history has so much been owed by so many to so few" - Ben S. Bernanke [Winston Churchill]
-- BunsenHoneydew, May 14 2010



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