Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order and causality in random arrays, to perc

Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue: * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will find she did

You get what you pay for.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some men don't think about sex at all... they become lawyers.

Indiana is a state dedicated to basketball. Basketball, soybeans, hogs and basketball. Berkeley, needless to say, is not nearly as athletic. Berkeley is dedicated to coffee, angst, potholes and coffee.

When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.

To err is human, to repent, divine, to persist, devilish.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Never have so many understood so little about so much.

Life is too short to be taken seriously.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behin

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it.

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author

The ideal voice for radio may be defined as showing no substance, no sex, no owner, and a message of importance for every housewife.

Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.

When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains, two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the history of war have s

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that balances are correct.

What one fool can do, another can.

You can't run away forever, But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

How apt the poor are to be proud.

As Gen. de Gaulle occassionally acknowledges America to be the daughter of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard.

Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.

Remembering is for those who have forgotten.

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.

"It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."

The only reward of virtue is virtue.

I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played for SEVEN hours. Great song.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure.

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.

Better late than never.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Time goes, you say? Ah no! Time stays, *we* go.

If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he really a guru at all?

"Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!"

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial: both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him during the trial."

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."

It seems to me that nearly every woman I know wants a man who knows how to love with authority. Women are simple souls who like simple things, and one of the simplest is one of the simplest to give. ... Our family airedale will come clear across t

They're giving bank robbing a bad name.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

To say you got a vote of confidence would be to say you needed a vote of confidence.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

It is so stupid of modern civilisation to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.

Your wig steers the gig.

You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.

Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits.

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.

The longest part of the journey is said to be the passing of the gate.

Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is metaphysics.

The ripest fruit falls first.

If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.

Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.

It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.

Three o'clock in the afternoon is always just a little too late or a little too early for anything you want to do.

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.

It's not easy, being green.

Necessity hath no law.

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole.

Why are you doing this to me? Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before there is change.

Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Men are superior to women.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.

If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.

When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss is away and you get twice as much done.

What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they

I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.

My father was a creole, his father a Negro, and his father a monkey; my family, it seems, begins where yours left off.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

... we must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.

The better part of valor is discretion.

"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to

The Bible says that woman was the last thing God made. Evidently He made her on Saturday night. She reveals his fatigue.

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."

A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better.

Just remember, wherever you go, there you are.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.

Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?

If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers.

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.

The two oldest professions in the world have been ruined by amateurs.

The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.

Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck.

The more the merrier.

Nothing succeeds like excess.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

If reporters don't know that truth is plural, they ought to be lawyers.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

With her body, woman is more sincere than man; but with her mind she lies. And when she lies, she does not believe herself.

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

Alas, how love can trifle with itself!

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.

... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great

Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.

Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York City. One is "Hey, taxi." Two is, "What train do I take to get to Bloomingdale's?" And three is, "Don't worry. It's just a flesh wound."

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here.

There are many of us in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get about the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer and the poor get it in the winter.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Nothing recedes like success.

The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity. ... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the Northern Ocean, h

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

Joe Cool always spends the first two weeks at college sailing his frisbee.

Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say, "Storms suck!"

Goals... Plans... they're fantasies, they're part of a dream world...

"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."

Many hands make light work.

Never take a resume seriously. Resumes only make money for the people who write the resumes. No resume ever tells an employer how many times a job applicant has had the clap. Why, indeed, would anyone hire a person based on a resume written by a

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Bullwinkle: You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit. General: What does that make YOU? Bullwinkle: What else? An executive.

"What was the worst thing you've ever done?" "I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing."

True leadership is the art of changing a group from what it is to what it ought to be.

If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?

Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

I am just a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.

New Jersey is not the armpit of the nation; it's the asshole of the universe.