User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Quote of the day

Useless twisting of the new technology... ...we have to veto... ...virtual insanity _{Jamiroquai, VIRTUAL INSANITY}

Like a dose of belladonna, I could cry but I don't wanna, and the dream's lost on me. _{Blondie, The Dream's Lost on Me}

I get weary, and sick of trying - I'm tired of living, and scared of dying _{Oscar Hammerstein, Showboat}

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all. _{Mario Savio, SPROUL HALL STEPS}

NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ADVICE NOT TAKEN. Speak the truth as best you can and hope someone is listening. _{Larry Niven, Scatterbrain}

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it had its head bit off by its young.
So out went the candle, and we were left darkling. _{The Fool, King Lear}

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. _{George Orwell, 1984}

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds : I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. _{Samuel Johnson, Preface to the Folio Edition of his Dictionary}

...please remember that we are all volunteers working towards the same purpose, and while disagreements may arise, there is always time to stand back and attempt to understand one another. _{Hersfold in his resignation speech}

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. _{attr. Helen Keller}

As much as possible, they made do with what they had, all the while preaching caution about the shaky empirical foundation _{Timothy L Alborn}

By accepting life’s limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free. _Epictetus

Please keep in mind that this is an encyclopedia [...] We are not trying to "connect" with new article creators _{User:Technical13}

An editor alleging misconduct by another editor is responsible for providing clear evidence of the alleged misconduct. An editor who is unable or unwilling to support such an accusation should refrain from making it at all. A claim of misconduct should be raised directly with the other user himself or herself in the first instance, unless there are compelling reasons for not doing so. If direct discussion does not resolve the issue, it should be raised in the appropriate forum for reporting or discussing such conduct, and should not generally be spread across multiple forums. Claims of misconduct should be made with the goal of resolving the problem, not of impugning another editor's reputation. _{The Arbcom...}

Editors are allowed to make many mistakes, administrators relatively few, checkusers and arbitrators almost none, and that is as it should be. _{Rich Farmbrough}

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important _{TS Eliot (stolen from User:Epipelagic)}

Refusal to engage in a constructive way is a toxic experience and one which is likely to discourage other editors more than any other single factor. _{User:Deltahedron (On Jimbo's talk page)}

All of society loses when creative people are discouraged from their pursuits by unfair criticism. _{Deborah Tannen The Argument Culture}

To become the dinner of a leopard,
When your disposition is anti-leopard,
Is not productive but counter-productive.
_{Kyrgz folk saying}

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. _{F. Scott Fitzgerald The Crack-Up, Esquire Magazine (February 1936)}

the combination of tolerance and imagination that to me is the epitome of all good government _{Learned Hand Holmes Lectures}

Collateral damage is not appropriate because human being are human beings, and we need to treat people with compassion and empathy. _{Jon Ronson GGTTG: 149}

There is a very serious "first to block" advantage that flies in the face of the spirit of the blocking policy. Users can be indefblocked without consensus if one admin declares their action to be "arbitration enforcement". _{User:Reaper Eternal}

A good memory and books at command are two of the greatest dangers of youth and form by themselves a terrible handicap... _{Frank Harris}

Don't bite the newbies
_{French Wikipedia}

Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible _{Edwin Land}

Privacy and copyright are two things nobody cares about unless it's their own privacy, and their own copyright. _{Mark Bide}

Time and all its multi-coloured dance, is nothing but the work of hands and days. _{Mike Harding}

"The Internet is marvellous it should be brilliant it shouldn't be a miserable place" _{Graham Cluley}

“the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit” _{Halfaker, et al.}

“I guess people who work in bakeries doesn't like the smell of cupcakes as much as other people. _{Amir Ladsgroup}

If there is a bandwagon, the most unexpected people are only too happy to close down eyes, ears, and brain and get on it…. _{Olwyn Hughes, quoted in Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm}

Trolling is in the the Socratic tradition _{Splendid Spoon}

If you do not know what writing is you may think it is not especially difficult… Let me tell you that it is an arduous task: it destroys your eyesight, bends your spine, squeezes your stomach and your sides, pinches your lower back and makes your whole body ache … _{Colophon of a twelfth century Beate from Sicily}

Identity always contains the spectre of non-identity within it, ...identity is always purchased at the price of exclusion of the Other, the repression or repudiation of non-identity _{D. Fuss, Essentially speaking 1989}

Necessity is the justification for every infringement of human liberty: it is the argument of tyrants, the creed of slaves. _{William Pitt}

"When you're at the top there's nowhere left to go but down. That's been said in a million country songs. It's true. As true for nations as it is for their citizens. For when you are at the top you aspire to attain that which cannot be attained. And in doing so achieve the ruin of all that you have built." _{From the music video for Weapon (thanks to the InedibleHulk)}

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. _{Theodore Roosevelt, on the rotunda of the Panama Canal}

And as she look't about, she did behold,
How over that same dore was likewise writ,
Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold,
That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
By any ridling skill, or commune wit.

At last she spyde at that roomes upper end,
Another yron dore, on which was writ,
Be not too bold; whereto though she did bend
Her earnest mind, yet wist not what it might intend.

Spenser

“Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere-- "Be bold;
Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly,”

_{Henry Wadsworth Longfellow} How very little can be done under the spirit of fear! _{Florence Nightingale}

The clarity of hindsight can deceive even while it illuminates. _{Thomas L Ahern, Good Questions, Wrong Answers}