Bureaucracy

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer

-- Dean Acheson

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by

-- Douglas Adams

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done

-- Fred Allen

We trained hard - but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization

-- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate

-- Dave Barry

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned

-- Milton Friedman

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't

-- Hyman Rickover

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop

-- Mario Savio, (1943-1996)

Business/Employment

This is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual job, you would have received raises, promotions, and other signs of appreciation

-- Anonymous

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at the moment

-- Robert Benchley

When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home

-- Betty Bender

There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job

-- George Crane

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith

-- Albert Einstein

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office

-- Robert Frost

Good hours, excellent pay, fun place to work, paid training, mean boss. Oh well, four out of five isn't bad

-- Help Wanted Ad, PA newspaper, 1994

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it

-- Abraham Lincoln

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work

-- John G. Pollard

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact

-- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business

-- Tom Robbins

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it

-- Theodore Roosevelt

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Therefore:

In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence

-- The Peter Principle

Work is a four-letter word

-- The Smiths (Morrissey)

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do

-- Oscar Wilde

Finance/Money

The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes..

-- Dave Barry

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it

-- G. K. Chesterton

A dollar saved is a quarter earned

-- John Ciardi

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart

-- ee cummings

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax

-- Albert Einstein

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability

-- Henry Ford

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life

-- Henry Ford

I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money

-- Arthur Godfrey

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Only the little people pay taxes

-- Leona Helmsley, hotel owner and prison inmate, 1989

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not

-- Fran Lebowitz

I owe the government $3400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a toilet seat

-- Michael McShane

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work

-- Robert Orben

We haven't the money, so we've got to think

-- Lord Rutherford

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating

-- Oscar Wilde

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you

-- Oscar Wilde

Law

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls

-- Lenny Bruce

Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too

-- Anton Chekhov

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer

-- Robert Frost

These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder

-- Jeff Greenfield, news analyst, describing the jury in the OJ Simpson murder trial, 1995

Laywers, I suppose, were children once

-- Charles Lamb

Lawyers are... operators of the toll bridge which anyone in search of justice must pass

-- Jane Bryant Quinn

If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?

-- Calvin Trillin

Math

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality

-- Albert Einstein

Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater

-- Albert Einstein

You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist

-- Len Evans, professor, Northwestern University, teaching an honors calculus course

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated

-- M. C. Reed

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture

-- Bertrand Russell

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

There are three types of people in this world: Those who can count, and those who can't

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

... it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art

-- John W. N. Sullivan

The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life

-- James Joseph Sylvester

Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God

-- Herbert Westren Turnbull

Media/Journalism

Unfortunately, the media have trouble distinguishing between real science and propaganda cross-dressed as science

-- Linda Bowles, political columnist

[You reporters] should have printed what he meant, not what he said

-- Earl Bush, press aide to Richard Daley

Journalism consists largely in saying "Lord Jones died" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive

-- G. K. Chesterton

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers

-- Gandhi

Whoever controls the media--the images--controls the culture

-- Allen Ginsberg

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock

-- Ben Hecht

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it

-- Stephen Leacock

Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk

-- Fran Lebowitz

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things!

-- Tom Lehrer

The telephone company is urging people to *please* not use the telephone unless it is absolutely necessary in order to keep the lines open for emergency personnel. We'll be right back after this break to give away a pair of Phil Collins tickets to caller number 95

-- Los Angeles disc jockey, right after the February 1990 earthquake

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all

-- Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road, 1945

Journalism is merely history's first draft

-- Geoffrey C. Ward

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community

-- Oscar Wilde

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read

-- Oscar Wilde

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands

-- Oscar Wilde

Economics

An economic forecaster is like a cross-eyed javelin thrower: they don't win many accuracy contests, but they keep the crowd's attention

-- Anonymous

Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist

-- Thomas Carlyle

In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from

-- Peter F. Drucker

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible

-- Alfred A. Knopf

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion

-- George Bernard Shaw

Science/Research

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl

-- Mike Adams

A behaviorist is someone who pulls habits out of rats

-- Anonymous

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny..."

-- Isaac Asimov

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three categories-- those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost

-- Russell Baker

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field

-- Niels Bohr

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants

-- General Omar Bradley

Art and science have their meeting point in method

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite

-- Paul Dirac

That's the nature of research--you don't know what in hell you're doing

-- 'Doc' Edgerton

A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. He sits on a hot stove for a minute, it's longer than any hour. That is relativity

-- Albert Einstein

A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it

-- Albert Einstein, attributed

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler

-- Albert Einstein

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts

-- Albert Einstein

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

-- Albert Einstein

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs

-- Albert Einstein

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms

-- Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science

-- Albert Einstein

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity

-- Albert Einstein

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work

-- Richard Feynman

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong

-- Buckminster Fuller

Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique added to the armamentarium of political inquiry. Anyone who cannot negotiate Chi squares, assess randomization, statistical significance, and standard deviations is less than illiterate; he is preconscious

-- A. James Gregor, An Introduction to Metapolitics, 1971

An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions

-- Robert A. Humphrey

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions

-- Aldous Huxley

The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact

-- Thomas Henry Huxley

When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research

-- Wilson Mizner

All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events

-- Lawrence J. Peter

Research is the act of going up alleys to see if they are blind

-- Plutarch

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage

-- Mark Russell

The only thing you will ever be able to say in the so-called 'social' sciences is: "some do, some don't."

-- Ernest Rutherford

Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool

-- Kelvin Throop III

. . . the social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation

-- Peter Ustinov, Dear Me

Science is a collection of successful recipes

-- Paul Valery

Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing

-- Wernher Von Braun

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin

-- John Von Neuman

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate

-- Steven Wright

Statistics

Statistics have shown that mortality increases perceptibly in the military during wartime

-- Alphonse Allais

One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife...

-- Robert Boynton

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you

-- Rita Mae Brown

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

-- Benjamin Disraeli

Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted

-- Albert Einstein

I could prove God statistically

-- George Gallup

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital

-- Aaron Levenstein

Ninety percent of everything is crap

-- Theodore Sturgeon

Universe

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move

-- Douglas Adams

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened

-- Douglas Adams

I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown

-- Woody Allen

The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you

-- Woody Allen

What do I dislike about death? Must be the hours

-- Woody Allen

I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge

-- Edward Chilton

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

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty

-- Albert Einstein

Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it

-- Max Frisch

There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for

-- Fred Hoyle

Maybe this world is another planet's hell

-- Aldous Huxley

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed

-- Christopher Morley

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. But not in that order

-- Brian Pickrell

In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time

-- Edward P. Tryon

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us

-- Bill Watterson, in his comic strip Calvin and Hobbes

Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...

-- Carl Zwanzig