Samizdata

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

Never become mired in defending an unworkable idea out of some misguided ego or machismo motivation. Cut your losses and move on.
– James C. Freund

“Cleanse The State With The Blood of Martyrs”, rumbled Three Yoked Oxen. Rincewind spun around and waved a finger under Three Yoked Oxen’s nose, which was as high as he could reach. “I’ll bloody well thump you if you trot out something like that one more time!” he shouted, and then grimaced at the realisation that he had just threatened a man three times heavier than he was. “Listen to me, will you? I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It’s never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting “Forward, brave commrades!” you’ll see he’s the one behind the bloody big rock and wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!”
– Rincewind, the Wizard from Terry Pratchett’s Interesting Times

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a gun”

(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke. This one came up on a computer newsgroup discussing open-source projects that would let anyone bypass censorship limitations such as Yahoo has imposed in China.)

The constant expansion of the market, both in extensiveness and in intensity, was the result of an absence of a political order extending over the whole of Western Europe
– Jean Baechler, The Origins of Capitalism

Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You’ll pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins.
– Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano, Mafia hit man