By others:

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
Albert Einstein

The greatest disloyalty one can offer to great pioneers is to refuse to move an inch from where they stood.
unknown

"Common sense is no longer common."
unknown

There are two types of people in the world: 1. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
unknown

"My current hobby is not collecting stamps. I'll be adding not collecting coins as soon as I don't have time."
unknown

"Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence."
Manly's Maxim

"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants."
Isaac Newton

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
George Orwell

"In 1947, ... the U. S. ... changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense. This ... was one of the greatest Orwellian doublespeak deceptions of all time."
http://www.omnicenter.org/warpeacecollection/departmentofwar.htm

"Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll give it a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some guy from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president."
Will in 'Good Will Hunting'

The more advanced the technology, the more fragile it becomes. The more advanced the civilization, the more fragile the culture. ...and in general terms: The more advanced something is, the more fragile it is.
Unknown

An expert is someone who knows more and more, about less and less, untill he knows everything about nothing.
Unknown

"...Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. ..."
Agent Smith, The Matrix

Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are thing we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
Donald Rumsfeld, during one of his clearer states of mind.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Mark Twain

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken

The second-cheapest department to run at a university is Mathematics; they only need paper, pencils and a trash bin. The cheapest department is Philosophy; they don't need a trash bin. And if funding for their paper and pencils runs out you can just tell them, "It's OK, the pencils don't really exist anyway."
Unknown

The online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, so long as they're willing to devote hundreds of hours of energy to fighting people with autistically long attention spans
Patrick Nielsen Hayden (about Wikipedia)

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of our industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now it's long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails, as long as it's possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can.
Noam Chomsky

These are not just academic exercises. We're not analyzing the media on Mars, or in the 18th century, or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving, because of policies that we are involved in we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and responsible for. And what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the interests of suffering people and not the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that's dripping from their hands because of the way they're allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.
Noam Chomsky

That which does not kill me has made its last mistake.
Seen on everything2

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke

Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law (unsourced)

Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
unknown

Advanced technology is indistinguishable from a sufficiently rigged demo.
Andy Finkel

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence tends to be indistinguishable from malice.
Clarke's corollary.

"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum"
ibid.

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz

There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
unknown

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
George Bernard Shaw

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx

By me:

  • the job title 'Quality Adviser' has been renamed to 'Service Delivery Improvement Manager' (seen at a certain organisation in the UK)
  • If it's not in my repository, it's not really worth keeping. (regarding which files to backup, because ideally only the repository needs backing up)
  • When no-one visits your website, at least the robots will.
  • The annoying things about public transport are twofold: the public, and the transport.
  • That only took too long! (when something took a long time)
  • Wikipedia: Whatever is written on some dodgy website must be true enough to use as a source.
  • Wikipedia: If a horde of angsty, white, 17 year olds living in their moms basement don't agree with your input it gets deleted.
  • The golden rule "treat others as you would like to be treated" reflects the arrogance and self-righteousness of those that invented it. It should of course be "Treat others as they would like to be treated".
  • It's sometimes seems easier to single handedly crumble the Himalayas with a pickaxe than to change your or someone else's character for the better.
  • The presence of royalty with power in countries claiming to be democratic is a sign of major hypocrisy.
  • It seems that everything that is popular is crap.
  • Common people's preoccupation can be gauged from the fact that anything educational in a book shop is labeled 'non-fiction'. They're as much non-fiction as a car is a horseless carriage.
  • I am now legally allowed to operate a multi-ton chunk of steel with wheels, at lethal velocities on public roads. (In other words, "I received my driving license.")
  • A man's responsibilities are roughly proportional to the number of keys on his key chain.
  • There's a man in a van driving slowly through my street, shouting something unintelligible every 10 meters. Perhaps he is proudly showing off his collection of rusty iron things in the back.
  • It's fascinating how saying "Word!" implies: "I follow your line of reasoning and concur with your general assessment"
  • Any technology not resembling magic is insufficiently advanced.
  • My capitalistic observation: It exists, therefor it is either profitable or funded by a wealthy entity.
  • My second capitalistic observation: Individualism is the fuel of consumerism and capitalism.
  • When dealing with Oracle software, all rules of logic and reproducibility are suspended.
  • Government employees will be the last ones to complain about tax rises.
  • "Best served chilled" means: This stuff tastes horrible at room temperature!
  • My motto in life is : "I will never compromise on my ideal of always being pragmatic and realistic in all matters." (Doesn't quite carry the contradiction I want it to have yet, I'm working on it ;) )
  • Real changes in government are not achieved by elections but through other means. (or: Real change is never effected by elections.)
  • Wherever I look for confirmation bias, I seem to find it, and I don't encounter cognitive dissonance when I'm trying to avoid it.
  • If it's not documented, it might as well not exist.
  • Given the cut throat capitalistic global economy, it will be extremely hard to become rich trading physical items.
  • With the invention of the internet and all the new communication tools it provides, people all over the world and now able to ignore eachother in many new ways.
  • You can't earn any gross profit unless you're stinking filthy rich.
  • Who throws the ketchup up, must catch the ketchup down.
  • I guess one of the first signs of getting old is being able to fall asleep while sitting.
  • I could tell you what quid pro quo means, but only if you'll tell me what pro bono means.
  • The summers in the UK last just long enough to make you forget how cold and gloomy the rest of the year is.
  • The dutch people are known to be quite humble, and they're so darn proud of it too! (Adapted from someone else ;)
  • You know there's someone from holland living in the house when you see a bunch of unopened hotel soap bottles gathering dust in the bathroom
  • Never assume anything in this world will remain the same
  • I find the signs saying 'End' after a traffic jam very disconcerting. The end of what? End of the motorway? The world as we know it? End of my life??
  • An optimist might think immortality might still be a reasonable possibility, after all, only 19 out of 20 people that have ever lived have died.
  • Genuine caffeine addiction would be becoming optimistic and hard working at the thought of the mere prospect of drinking some coffee.
  • Things we need for things we want wouldn't be needed if we didn't want those things.
  • Save the environment: don't print my email as it wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on
  • Perhaps if you think you're a bad "X" (e.g. father, mother, employee, ...) with much room for improvement it may be that you're actually a good one.