George Flanagin

Software Development, Management, and ... other stuff ... at least on this one page.

A note on the limited scope of the material: The only words here are from books and articles I have read or things that have been said to me. Most of the material is not very uplifting, but then I don't think that ``Wow, what a beautiful day!'' is a meaningful contribution to understanding life on that day or any other.

I only check the link integrity only about once a month, so you might find a broken one.

Saul AlinskyI start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That means working within the system. There is no other place to start from except political lunacy.
Jeffrey ArcherBirth is life's first lottery ticket.
Emperor Leto Atreides IIThe past is no farther away than your pillow.
Lera AuerbachIf there is consensual love, there must be consensual art, but great art is never consensual – it rips you apart, uses you for its creation, and then leaves you like an empty useless shell. You may resent it, but you can't help loving it all the same.
Patricia BarberOn the dark side of passion comes a taste for revenge.
Julian BarnesI think when we are young, we invent futures for ourselves. When we are older, we invent pasts for others.
Paul BeattyThey say a cigarette takes three minutes off your life, but good hashish makes dying seem so far away.
Russell BernaboI saw the best lines of my generation destoyed by a flock of seagulls.
Leonard BernsteinIt's easy to shake the blame for any crime
By trotting out that mea culpa pantomime:
"Yes, yes, I'm bad. I've sinned. I'm sad".
Then go out and do it one more time.
Charles M. BlowThe mouth that demeans may not always be attached to the hand that destroys, but they are most assuredly connected in spirit and in spite.

-- From 28 July 2019 column in NY Times.

John BoenerDrinking wine is a marathon, not a sprint.
Paul BowlesWhereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.
Douglas BroomeI'm not as good as I should be, but I'm better than I want to be.

-- said about a tedious and error prone task.

Vincent BugliosiWhen you have a large group of people devoting their lives to looking at every word, every comma, they can create a lot of mischief.
Boris BukhSome ancient people wasted time on research in number theory, some of which ended up being practically useful. Some studied motion of stars in detail far exceeding calendaring and navigational needs. This also proved useful. Many, many studies also led to dead-ends. At the time, one could not tell which of them would.
George Gordon ByronMy slumbers -- if I slumber -- are not sleep, but a continuance of enduring thought, which then I can resist not. In my heart there is a vigil, and these eyes but close to look within.
Stephen L. CarterAs there are precious moments between two people that can never be retrieved, there are also moments of tension that can never be avoided, no matter how they try.
Stephen ColbertWe don't need any help looking hypocritical, okay? We're the country that invented both chili cheese fries and open-heart surgery.
Saint John Will I Am Coltrane(about Miles Davis) He is completely unpredictable: sometimes he would just walk off stage after just playing a few notes, not even completing one chorus.
Christopher CookTristan und Isolde was never intended to be a romantic love story. This is not the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, nor even Guinevere's adulterous love for Lancelot. After Tristan und Isolde there is nothing.
Sir Alistair CookeIn the life of an overnight sensation, a year is an æon.
Georges-Jacques DantonI am not so much an atheist as an adult.
Miles Davis(about Saint John Coltrane) He's so tied up in his music that even his friends don't understand what he's trying to do.
Richard DawkinsWishful thinking counts, because human psychology has a near-universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
Richard DawkinsBleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance, there is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding.
Colin DexterActually is a ridiculous word, isn't it? It's a weasel word -- it means nothing whatsoever. It's a space filler. Whether I actually saw her, I don't know. What I do know is that I saw her.
Stephen R. DonaldsonWhat good are friends if they know you too well to believe your lies?
Sophie EganWe don't eat fats or cholesterol or antioxidants -- we eat food.
Shūsaku EndōI cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea is the silence of God... the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish, God remains with folded arms, silent.
Richard FlanaganVirtue is just vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.
George FlanaginAny ordering system is partly a hashing algorithm: for example, only alphabetization puts me between Richard Flanagan and Karen Joy Fowler.
Karen Joy FowlerAn oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.
Tana FrenchI crave the truth, and I lie.
Norman GoldmanIf you are unwilling to vote for the lesser of two evils, then you are voting for the greater of the two evils.
Paul GrahamI've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent
Elizabeth Woolridge GrantI miss doing nothing the most of all.
Thomas Hardy, OMNature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game.
Toby HendyPeople think there is a lot of effort involved in having long hair, but really it is one of the laziest things you can do. You literally just do nothing, and don’t cut it.
Henricus Rex VIIIMost humility is pretense.
Frank HerbertHe who wishes to repeat the past must control the teaching of history.
Rogers HornsbyPeople ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball: Well, I stare out the window and wait for spring.
Michel HouellebecqIf life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one.
Max HowellBut well, what the fuck does comp-sci have to do with modern app development? [after failing to be hired at Google, following the comp-sci interview]
Greg IlesPeople need a mystery onto which they can project all their free floating paranoia.
John IrvingBeing afraid you will look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.
David JanszenSome people only have one joke, so they molest it into the ground.
Lady P. D. James(on the danger of too much conversation) Words crowd out thought.
Sophie Monks KaufmanMelancholia is a film that, like many of Von Trier's works, offers a provocation: the depressed outlook, it dares to suggest, is the correct one. The world is ending. Resistance is futile. All you can do is accept this state of catastrophe and relax into the beauty of this final spectacle.
Stephen KingThe exhausted mind is obsession's easiest prey.
Stephen KingHe saw two pages of the Las Vegas Sun go riffling by. The headline that revealed itself over and over again as the paper flapped and turned was Plague Grows Worse. Washington Mute.

From The Stand, 1978

Donald KnuthA trick is a clever idea that can be used once, while a technique is a trick that can be used at least twice.
Patricia KopatchinskajaMy dreams opened up into the limitlessness of fantasy.
Cathy LadmanAll religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, but with different holidays.
Scott E. LewisIf you get all the multiple layers of things that are supposed to improve productivity out of the way, most [programming] tasks take very little time.
Thomas MannThere is nothing actual about time. If it seems long to you, then it is long, and if it seems to pass quickly, then it’s short. But how long or short it is in actuality, no one knows.
Dame Hilary MantelIt is the absence of facts that frightens people; the gap you open into which they pour their fears, fantasies and desires.
Dame Hilary MantelIt is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal.
Mao Tse-TungThe enemy advances, we retreat.
The enemy camps, we harass.
The enemy tires, we attack.
The enemy retreats, we pursue.
Brian McGreevyThere are dreams so real that you can still feel them when you wake up. ... But then, there's the smell of coffee.
John McWhorter, VReligions don’t always have gods, but they usually need sins, which in the new religion is the whiteness that supposedly bestrides everything in our lives.
David MitchellLove is pure joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan shark prices.
Prof. Melissa O'NeillFrom a very practical perspective, the longer the code, the more likely it is to contain an implementation error.
Muad'DibThe concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
Dorothy ParkerEternity is the length of time it takes two people to eat a ham.
Lee ParkerLife is a pissing match; that's why drinking is so important.
Brandon PikeWhen in doubt, people follow traditional paths. That way, if they lose, at least they have an alibi.
Marcel ProustIt is a charming law of nature that we live in perfect ignorance of those we love.
Joshua RedmanImprovisation is a team sport. Excellence can be infectious. Greatness, sometimes even temporarily transferable. Spontaneity abhors a vacuum. Invention is seldom remote.
Philip RieffWe are, I fear, getting to know one another. Reticence, secrecy, concealment of self have been transformed into social problems; once they were aspects of civility.
Maximillien de RobespierreWhen will the people be educated? When they have enough to eat, and when the rich and the government stop bribing treacherous tongues and pens to deceive them; when their interests are identified with those of the people.
When will this be? Never.

(trans: Thomas Carlyle)

Carlos Ruiz-ZafónSe conoce que, en las fases más avanzadas del cretinismo, la falta de ideas se compensa con el exceso de ideologías. (It is known that in the most advanced stages of cretinism, the lack of ideas is made up for by an excess of ideologies.)
Bertrand Russell, OMHappiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end.
Grant SandersonThere is no cold hard rigorous proof that it's hard to compute [a hash function] in the reverse direction. And yet, a huge amount of modern security depends on cryptographic hash functions and the idea that they have this property [hard to compute in reverse].
Leif SegerstamDon't be afraid to increase the dose of porridge of music, there is no danger from overeating.
Frank SinatraI feel sorry for people who don't drink; when they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they are going to feel all day.
Dame Edith SitwellHell is just as properly proper as Greenwich, or as Bath, or Joppa.
Anthony SopranoI didn't make the rules; the rules have always been there.
Kaikhosru Sorabji... likewise, to the everlasting glory of those few Men blessed and sanctified in the curses and execrations of those many whose praise is eternal damnation.
Eliot SpitzerThe 'revolving door' is a better metaphor than [it is] a diagnosis.
Jake SwearingenYoutube is the largest clearinghouse of human stupidity the world has ever known.
Taylor SwiftI don't start shit, but I can tell you how it ends.
Donald J. TrumpHe put out a statement, that was essentially a project really, more or less of an option, that we were looking at in Moscow, and everybody knew about it. I didn't do the project. I decided not to do the project. So I didn't do it. So we're not talking about doing a project, we're talking about not doing a project. We were thinking about building a building. We had an option, I don't know what you would call it. We decided, I decided, ultimately not to do it. There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. If I did do it, there would have been nothing wrong. That was a project that we didn't do, that was a project that wasn't done for a lot of reasons. This was a deal that didn't happen. That was no deal. I mean, if you look, this was an option, I guess. I don't know. I want to be very specific. So but to my way of thinking, it was an option that I decided not to do. We had a position to possibly do a deal, to build a building of some kind in Moscow. I decided not to do it.

--(transcribed from audio)
29 November 2018
Demonstrating palilalia.

Lars von TrierThoughts distort reality, not the other way around.
James WanGoogle's corporate motto may be "Don't Be Evil," but its bottom line is still "Make A Profit."
Oscar WildeWhat is truth? In matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.
Ron Kipling WilliamsProfanity is what you see everyday. Words don’t do it justice.
Peter WilsonReports may or may not include an abstract, but if so it will often be called a 'Summary'. There may be an even shorter abstract as well, often called an 'Executive Summary', for those who feel that details are irrelevant.