Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages


You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
 
From Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach

100000 Lemmings can't be wrong.
 
(graffiti)
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
 
Bill Gates, 1981
A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
A brave man dies but once, a coward many times.
 
(Iowa proverb)
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
 
Douglas Adams
A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
 
Joseph Campbell
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
 
William Blake
A friend gives me fish.
A good friend teaches me fishing.
 
Max Havel
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
 
George Bernard Shaw
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
 
Segal's Law
A mile of road will take you a mile.
A mile of runway can take you anywhere.
A password is like your underwear: change it frequently, don't share it with others, and don't ask to borrow someone else's.
 
Sunbelt Software W2KNews newsletter
A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
 
Harry Truman
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
 
Winston Churchill
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
 
Richard Bach
in
A Gift of Wings
A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code.
A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year.
 
Andrew Tanenbaum
A typical Irish town consists of several buildings, one of which is always a bar called a 'pub'.
Next to this there will typically be another pub, which is adjacent to several more pubs.
Your larger towns may also have a place that sells food, but this is not critical.
 
Dave Barry
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
 
Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Air conditioned environment - Do NOT open Windows!
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
 
George Bernard Shaw
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
 
Arthur Schopenhauer
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
 
Martin Golding
An expert is a man that has made all mistakes possible in a narrow field of expertise.
 
Albert Einstein
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
 
Arthur C. Clarke
Anyone who thinks animals have no will... has never bathed a cat.
 
Jennifer L. Dziura
Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is not different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
As I was leaving this morning, I said to myself the last thing you must do is forget your speech.
And sure enough, as I left the house this morning, the last thing I did was to forget my speech.
 
Rowan Atkinson
Ask a new question and you will learn new things.
 
George Greenstein
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
 
Thomas A Kempis
Beer. Now there's a temporary solution.
 
Homer Simpson
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.
 
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Best file compression around: DEL *.* = 100% compression
Better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness.
 
(Chinese proverb)
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society.
The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.
 
Gil Stern
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
 
Terry Pratchett
Buy land. They've stopped making it.
 
Mark Twain
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
 
(Japanese Windows error message)
Computers let you make more mistakes than any other invention in history. With the possible exception of handguns and Tequila.
 
Mitch Radcliffe
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.
Dear life, when I asked whether or not my day could get any worse, it was meant as a rethorical question, not a challenge!
Debugging is always harder than programming, so if you write code as cleverly as you know how, by definition you will be unable to debug it.
Did you know that dolphins are so intelligent that within only a few weeks of captivity, they can train Americans to stand at the very edge of the pool and throw them fish?
Don't believe everything you think
Don't fix it if it ain't broken, don't break it if you can't fix it
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
 
(Cherokee proverb)
Don't worry about what people think. They don't do it very often.
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary.
No such faith comforts the software engineer.
 
Fred Brooks
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
 
(Proverbs 17:28)
Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Feeling trapped? Just add a new dimension!
First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.
 
Mark Twain
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
 
Gandhi
Flying is simple. You just throw yourself at the ground and miss.
 
Douglas Adams
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.
 
Arthur C. Clarke
Give a man a fish and he will be back for more.
Slap him with a fish and he will go away forever.
Give light, and the darkness disappear of itself.
 
Desiderius Erasmus
God will pardon me. That's his line of work.
 
Last words of Heinrich Heine
Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgement.
 
Higdon
Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
 
Robert J. Hanlon
Happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
 
Karen S. Magee
Having been erased, the document you're seeking must now be retyped.
 
(Japanese Windows error message)
He has either never been to Umm Qasr or he's never been to Southampton.
There's no beer, no prostitutes and people are shooting at us.
It's more like Portsmouth.
 
A British squaddie in Umm Qasr after Geoff Hoon described the port as "a city similar to Southampton"
He who asks questions, cannot avoid the answers.
 
(African proverb)
He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey.
He who blames himself is halfway there.
He who blames no one has arrived.
 
(Chinese proverb)
He who learns, teaches.
 
(African proverb)
He who shits on the road, meets flies on his return.
 
(African proverb)
He who teaches, learns the most.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
 
Edward Gibbon
History isn't just the story of bad people doing bad things. It's quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.
 
C. S. Lewis
I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
 
Dave Edison
I'm going to stop asking "How dumb can you get?"
People seem to be taking it as a challenge.
I am not young enough to know everything.
 
Oscar Wilde
I didn't fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations that wouldn't work.
 
Thomas A. Edison
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
 
Bill Cosby
I find television very educating.
Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
 
Groucho Marx
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
 
Darth Vader
I have a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel!
 
Baldrick
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
 
Bjarne Stroustrup,
inventor of the C++ language
I never tried this before, so I can certainly do that
I never did a day's work in my life -- it was all fun.
 
Thomas Edison
I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident.
 
Larry Wall
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
 
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
I tried to be normal, but being me is more fun
I want to write for a readership that can create miracles. Children create miracles when they read.
 
Astrid Lindgren
I want to fly where no seagull has flown before.
I want to know what there is to know about life!
 
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
 
by Richard Bach
If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
 
The Dalai Lama
If all else fails, read the manual.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
If it can be communicated in words, it is a lie.
If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.
 
Dennis Roch
If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
 
Linda Ellerbee
If things are simply out of your control, there is no point in worrying about them or letting them bother you.
 
Dorian Yates
If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.
 
Maya Angelou
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
 
Lin Yutang
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
 
Albert Einstein
If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl.
But by all means, keep moving.
 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle "Take two aspirin" and "Keep away from children".
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
 
Mark Twain
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
 
Derek Bok
If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.
 
Richard Bach
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either.
 
Dick Cavett
In a very real sense, we are all aliens on a strange planet. We spend most of our lives reaching out and trying to communicate. If during our whole lifetime, we could reach out and really communicate with just two people, we are indeed very fortunate.
 
Gene Roddenberry
In mathematics you don't understand things.
You just get used to them.
 
Johann von Neumann
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
 
Dr. Martin L. King
In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.
 
Daniel L. Reardon
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
 
Robert Frost
Interviewer: "What do you think of Western civilisation?"
Ghandi: "I think it would be a great idea."
Is a lie still a lie when everybody knows it's a lie?
 
Gregory House, M.D.
It always seems impossible until it's done.
 
Nelson Mandela
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.
 
Sir Winston Churchill
It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
 
Oscar Wilde
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
 
Voltaire
It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.
 
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is now beyond any doubt that cigarettes are the biggest cause of statistics.
 
graffiti
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
 
Carl Sagan
It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
 
Woody Allen
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
 
Warren Buffett
It takes a long time to become young.
 
Pablo Picasso
It takes less courage to criticize the decisions of others than to stand by your own.
 
Attila the Hun
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
 
Steven Wright
It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.
It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames.
 
Harry Hill
It's the job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.
 
J.R.R. Tolkien
I've been on the calendar, but never on time.
 
Marilyn Monroe
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself.
Life's not about waiting for the storms to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.
 
Vivian Greene
Life has more to offer than just increasing the speed of it.
 
Mahatma K. Gandhi
LIFE is short, BREAK the rules
FORGIVE quickly, KISS slowly
LOVE truly, LAUGH uncontrollably
And never regret anything that once made you smile.
LIFE may not be the party we hoped for
but while we're here we should dance.
 
Lena (SentimentalMe69)
Live long and prosper.
 
(Vulcan greeting)
Live Now.
Procrastinate Later.
 
Robert Holden
Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.

Betty Smith
Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.
 
Dorothy Sarnoff
"Mama, what would you like best of all?" "Two really good, sweet girls", said Mama.
Mardie's eyes turned shiny and her voice trembled a little. "But what would you do with Lisbet and me?"
 
From 'Mardie' by Astrid Lindgren
May the Force be with you.
 
(Jedi greeting)
My goal is simple.
It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
 
Stephen Hawking
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
 
Jack Nicholson
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity...
 
M.N. Plano
Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that amateurs built the Ark.
Professionals built the Titanic.
Never believe anything until it's officially denied.
 
Margaret Atwood
Never regret anything that made you smile.
 
Mark Twain
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
 
Henry Ford
Of all the strategems, to know when to quit is the best.
 
(Chinese proverb)
One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas.
How he got into my pyjamas I'll never know.
 
Groucho Marx
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
 
Bertrand Russell
Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it.
 
Friedrich Nietzsche
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
 
Albert Einstein
People in the West are always getting ready to live.
 
(Chinese proverb)
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
 
Niels Bohr
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
Randal Schwartz: I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG?
Larry Wall: Let's call it an accidental feature.
Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him "Be fruitful and multiply". But not in those words.
 
Woody Allen
'Tag' is a complex game involving many complexities. Someone must first be 'It'. Once that is decided this temporary pariah tries to tag someone else, using stealth, speed, resourcefulness and predatory instincts to transfer his or her own 'it-ness' to the other person. You can only tag someone with your hand. So if someone who is 'it' tags you (with his or her hand) then you become 'It' and they are no longer 'It'. They are free of 'It' and can return to normalcy. You cannot immediately transfer your 'It-ness' back to the person who was just 'It', because there are no 'tag-backs' in Tag. The only way to lose is if you're one of the two last people on earth and are tagged by the other person (remember no 'tag-backs' in Tag). However, it is conceivable to procreate with this person and tag the offspring.
That is surprising, since I have been practicing all night.
 
Last words of John Philpot Curran when his doctor said he was coughing "with more difficulty"
The Beatles could shit in my hand bag, I’d still hide my polo mints in there.
 
Liam Gallagher
The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.
 
Dudley Moore
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
 
Abraham Lincoln
The best time to plant an oak tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is right now!
The better your four-wheel drive, the further out you get stuck.
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
 
Tom Clancy
The Gods cannot help those who do not seize opportunities.
 
(Chinese proverb)
The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
 
Gandhi
The guy that says it can’t be done should stay away from the guy who is doing it.
 
MagniX CEO Roei Ganzarski
The human species needs to know that we deserve to have peace.
 
Robert Schuller (UN)
The land outlasts the empires.
 
Ursula K. LeGuin
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
 
Douglas Adams
The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.
 
Mark Twain
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
 
John Powell
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
 
R. Hamming
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
 
George Bernard Shaw
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
 
George Bernard Shaw
The two basic principles of Windows system administration:
• For minor problems, reboot
• For major problems, reinstall
 
[unattended.sourceforge.net]
There are 10 kinds of people; those who understand binary, and those who don't.
There are just two kinds of [programming] languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses.
 
Bjarne Stroustrup
There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.
 
Ed Crowley
There are three sides to any story: my side, his side and the truth.
There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer.
There is no disease that enough love will not heal.
No door that enough love will not open.
No gulf that enough love will not bridge.
No wall that enough love will not throw down.
And no sin that enough love will not redeem.
It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble.
How hopeless the outlook.
How muddled the tangle.
How great the mistake.
A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.
And if you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful person in the world.
 
Emmett Fox
There is no evil or good but thinking makes it so.
 
William Shakespeare
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
 
Ken Olson, former President, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
There is no right way to do a wrong thing.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
 
George Bernard Shaw
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.
Time's fun when you're having flies.
 
Kermit the Frog
Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so.
 
Ford Prefect
in
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
 
John Archibald Wheeler
Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.
 
(Japanese proverb)
To ask is no sin and to be refused is no calamity.
 
(Russian proverb)
To complain about a shortage of time is like a fish in the sea complaining that it has a shortage of water.
 
Mark Forster
To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am.
 
M.C. Escher
To those who understand computers well, it's amazing when they work at all.
 
Sudley Place Software
To try and fail is not laziness.
 
(African proverb)
Too many errors on one line (make fewer).
 
(Apple MPW C compiler error message)
Trust me, I know what I'm doing.
 
Sledge Hammer
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
 
Mark Twain
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do!
Unfortunate is the man who has not stopped to watch a tiny silver biplane. The sun glints and sparkles on the wings and cowlings as the aircraft loops and rolls with easy grace.
 
Neil Williams on the De Havilland Tiger Moth
UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.
 
Dennis Ritchie
Unix is user friendly.
It is just very picky about who its friends are.
Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you’ve given freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or to hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently, until you’ve given the whole world its freedom, you’ll never have your freedom.
 
Adyashanti
Violence is a highly overrated problem-solving technique.
 
Arten in The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary R. Renard
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
We're from the iron and steel bussiness: he does the ironing while I do the stealing.
We can do no great things; only small things with great love.
 
Mother Teresa
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
 
Alan Turing
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
 
Gandhi
We spend our whole youth to obtain wealth and our whole wealth to obtain youth.
We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.
 
Stacia tauscher
 
on The Literacy Site
Well done is better than well said.
 
Benjamin Franklin
"What day is it?" asked Pooh.
"It's today." squeaked Piglet.
"My favorite day." said Pooh.
 
From Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne
"What do we want?"
"Time Travel!"
"When do we want it?"
"That's Irrelevant!"
 
Koushik Dutta
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.
 
Richard Bach
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
 
John Lubbock
What you fight is what you win.
 
Ursula K. LeGuin
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
 
Dom Helder Camara
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
 
Mark Twain
When we are looking for advanced commands or code it is referred to as "vanderwoude-ing", as your site is invariably the first place we look.
 
Jeremy Hudson
When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.
Provided, of course, that you know there is a problem.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
 
Oscar Wilde
Why do I keep running to find a place to rest?
 
Guy Finley
Why do programmers always get Christmas and Halloween mixed up?
Because Dec 25 = Oct 31.
Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
 
Eleanor Roosevelt
Wise men talk because they have something to say.
Fools talk because they have to say something.
 
Plato
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
 
Oscar Wilde
Worry is a misuse of imagination
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow.
It only saps today of its joy.
 
Leo Buscaglia
Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.
 
Elon Musk
You already possess everything necessary to become great.
 
(Crow proverb)
You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
 
Richard Bach
You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
 
From Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
You are young only once, but you can be immature all your life.
You must keep your mind on the objective, not on the obstacle.
 
William Randolph Hearst
You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
 
Henry Louis Mencken
You see things; and you say "Why?"
But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
 
George Bernard Shaw
You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
Your children need your presence more than your presents.
 
Jesse Jackson
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
 
Richard Bach
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
 
Bill Gates
You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
 
Robin Williams