A Sense of Scale

"A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders."
- Lord Dunsany, The Laughter of the Gods

"The awesome splendour of the universe is much easier to deal with
if you think of it as a series of small chunks."
- Terry Pratchett, Mort

"Anything over four hundred is basically just lots."
- Tom Holt, Wish You Were Here

"INFINITE: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that, in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real 'wow, that's big' time. Infinity is so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here."
- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"If you think you're too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."
- Bette Reese

"God's nose, to begin with, must be the biggest nose you can imagine. In fact, theology and mathematics teach us that it must be infinite in size. Just think -- bigger than the Sun, bigger than comets, galaxies -- and still, a nose."
- Damon Knight, God's Nose

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

Transportation

"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn
to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams."
- Mary Ellen Kelly

"Have you ever noticed ... Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
- George Carlin

"Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Cars, in theory, give you a terrifically fast method of traveling from place to place. Traffic jams, on the other hand, give you a terrific opportunity to stay still." - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens "Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass
from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go."
- Ambrose Bierce

"The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers."
- Dave Barry

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything."
- Charles Kuralt

"Restore human legs as a means of travel.
Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities."
- Lewis Mumford

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire."
- unknown

"Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.
'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire cat.
'I don't know,' Alice answered.
'Then,' said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.'"
- Lewis Carroll

"Someone who arrives at an airport two hours early will have to wait another two hours because his plane is late getting in, whereas someone who turns up three minutes before takeoff will invariably find that the plane left three minutes early."
- Tom Holt, Overtime

"There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane:
Either you have diarrhea, or you're anxious to meet people who do."
- Rich Jeni

On Being "PC"

"Being Politically Correct means always having to say you're sorry."
- Charles Osgood

"Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want."
- Myrtle Reed

"Back in the Alfalfa Sprout Capital of the Universe, standing here at the ground zero of political correctness, I am reminded of my old fondness for these dear and fuzzy folk. I think of them as the American hobbits, except that they have, of course, banned smoking. Here they are, saving water, saving whales, saving dolphins and generally trying to bring humankind up to a level of perfection that is in almost lunatic defiance of everybody else's tendency to let things go to hell in a handbasket."
- Molly Ivins, columnist, writing about Boulder, Colo.

"Political correctness has no place in the arts."
- Kevin Kline, actor

"Am I the only one who's noticed that you can't buy a decent toy gun anymore?"
- Charles Memminger, columnist

"Playing cowboy was simply not done these days. ... It's all right for kids to play Indian maidens, mainly because Disney says so. Indian maidens were sensitive to the environment. Cowboys walked in the house with cow stuff on their boots. Indian maidens communed with wildlife. Cowboys shot varmints. Indian maidens ate wild hickory nuts. Cowboys had buffalo breath."
- Charles Memminger, columnist

Computers

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
- Rich Cook

"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers."
- Pablo Picasso

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman/founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"If automobiles had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."
- Robert Cringely

"DOS computers, manufactured by million of companies, are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that while cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, numbers alone do not denote a higher life form."
- The New York Times

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention
in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
- Mitch Ratcliffe, Technology Review

"That's what's cool about working with computers. They don't argue, they remember everything and they don't drink all your beer."
- Paul Leary

Health & Anatomy

"What nearly all medicine boils down to is: leave the human body alone and comfortable, and in time it'll sort itself out."
- Tom Holt, Paint Your Dragon

"Go away ... I'm all right."
- H.G. Wells

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
- Mark Twain

"The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to."
- student test paper

Sports Shorts

"Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating back to the time, millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire."
- Dave Barry

"Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers."
- Merle Kessler

"All of Earth's creatures have, hidden within their beings, a wild uncontrollable urge to punt!"
- Snoopy (Charles M. Schulz)

"The pride and presence of a professional football team is far more important than 30 libraries."
- Art Modell, owner of the Baltimore Ravens

"Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings."
- George F. Will

"Without males, there would be no such sport as professional lawn mower racing. Also, there would be a 100 percent decline in the annual number of deaths related to efforts to shoot beer cans off heads."
- Dave Barry

"I'd recommend fishing. It's a good way to waste time while feeling productive."
- Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying

"There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot."
- Steve Wright

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day."
- unknown

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base."
- Dave Barry

"To me, boxing is like a ballet,
except there's no music,
no choreography
and the dancers hit each other."
- Jack Handey

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