Words of the wise

"I think there is a world market for, maybe, five computers."

- Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of IBM), 1943.

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation), 1977.

"It's a racket - those Wall Street guys are crooked."

- Al Capone.

"Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!"

- Huey Long.

"Everything changed after 9/11."

- Anon, but probably someone from the Northeast Corridor with scant regard for Oklahoma City.

"To avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and children."

- Advice given on a plastic bag.

"They survived by eating small fish regurgitated by seabirds."

- Report about two shipwrecked Burmese sailors afloat in an icebox.

"Every village, the global one included, has its idiots."

- Martin Rees, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

"Every gun that is made, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R), 1953.

"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

"It's against the law to hire people illegally."

- John Kerry (Democratic presidential candidate, in debate October 13, 2004).

"You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain. But you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder. One would suppose that they rarely were disappointed."

- H. D. Thoreau (in "Life Without Principle").

"The real purpose of a railroad is to serve the public. There is no reason why it should be diverted from that service and set to doing an entirely different thing - putting money into the pockets of shareholders who make no contribution to the road's actual operation."

- Henry Ford ("Railway Gazette" vol. 71, 1921, p.940).

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