This used to be a page with links to other mostly geek-flavoured websites.  But the links were getting gradually more and more out of date and I couldn't be bothered to keep the page current, so I decided to just change it into a quote board with some links to a few friends' websites thrown in for good measure.  You can see the old page here if you really want to.


Quotes

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there can be no hope for it.
                                                                                – Albert Einstein


It's like male geeks don't know how to deal with real live women, so they just assume it's a user interface problem. Not their fault. They'll just wait for the next version to come out – something more 'user friendly.'
                                                                                – Douglas Coupland, Microserfs
                                                                                (thanks to my friend Margaret for this one ;-)


We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
                                                                                – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory


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 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


The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
                                                                                – Samuel P. Huntington


    Infatuation is instant desire. It's one set of glands calling to another. Love, on the other hand, is friendship that has caught fire. It takes root and grows – one day at a time.
    Infatuation is marked by a feeling of insecurity. You are excited and eager, but not genuinely happy. There are nagging doubts, unanswered questions, little bits and pieces about your beloved that you would just as soon not examine too closely. It might spoil the dream.
    Love is the quiet understanding and mature acceptance of imperfection. It is real. It gives you strength and grows beyond you – to bolster your beloved. You are warmed by his presence, even when he is away. Miles do not separate you.
    Infatuation says, 'We must marry right away. I can't risk losing him.'
    Love says, 'Be patient. Don't panic. He is yours. Plan your future with confidence.'
    Infatuation has an element of sexual excitement. If you are honest, you will admit it is difficult to be in one another's company unless you are sure it will end in intimacy. Love is the maturation of friendship. You must be friends before you can be lovers.
    Infatuation lacks confidence. When he's away, you wonder if he's unfaithful. Sometimes you even check.
    Love means trust. You are calm, secure, and unthreatened. He feels that trust and it makes him even more trustworthy.
    Infatuation might lead you to do things you'll regret later, but love never will.
    Love makes you look up. It makes you think up. It makes you a better person than you were before.
                                                                                – Ann Landers


No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
                                                                                – Edmund Burke


A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
                                                                                – Antoine de Saint-Exupery


As you enter this life
I pray you depart
With a wrinkled face
And a brand new heart
                                                                                – U2, Love And Peace Or Else


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.
                                                                                – T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding


How singular is the thing called pleasure and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it... yet he who pursues either is generally compelled to take the other; their bodies are two but they are joined by the same head.
                                                                                – Socrates


Poverty Jet Set: A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people named Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.

Terminal Wanderlust: A condition common to people of transient middle-class upbringings. Unable to feel rooted in any one environment, they move continually in hopes of finding an idealised sense of community in the next location.
                                                                                – Douglas Coupland, Generation X


This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
                                                                                – George Bernard Shaw


We work to feed our appetites;
Meanwhile our souls go hungry.

Crying is better than laughing.
It blotches the face but it scours the heart.

Wisdom is better than warheads,
But one hothead can ruin the good earth.
                                                                                – The Quester, Ecclesiastes


Religion is to be defended not by putting to death but by dying, not by cruelty but by patient endurance, not by guilt but by good faith.
                                                                                – Lactantius, The Divine Institutions


Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it – memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.
                                                                                – Tad Williams


If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children, you hurt me, you hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite God Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter further along its path back to God.
                                                                                – Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art


When one dreams alone, it is only a dream. When many people dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality.
                                                                                – Friedensreich Hundertwasser


The truly erotic is the mingling of souls.
                                                                                – Dallas Willard


Love is an ideal thing; marriage is a real thing. A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
                                                                                – Johann Wolfgang Goethe


The unexamined life is not worth living.
                                                                                – Socrates



Friends and Acquaintances