Handel's Royal Fireworks
Sinfonia to Bach's Cantata #29
Edvard Grieg's In The Hall Of The Mountain King
Beethoven's 9th Symphony
Vangelis' Conquest of Paradise
Typewriter by Leroy Anderson

"When anger rises, think of the consequences" - Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

"The true lesson of John Henry: Never compete with a machine at the task for which it was designed" - Unknown

"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect."--Linus Torvalds

"We are now on the eve of the second transit of a pair, after which there will be no other till the twenty-first century of our era has dawned upon the earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004. When the last transit season occurred the intellectual world was awakening from the slumber of ages, and that wondrous scientific activity which has led to our present advanced knowledge was just beginning. What will be the state of science when the next transit season arrives God only knows." - William Harkness, director US Naval Obervatory, 1882 (Regarding 2004 transit of Venus)

"I honestly have the feeling of groping for words to explain this or I might say, my God, what have we done?" - Recordkeeper of B-29 Bomber 'Enola Gay,' August 6, 1945, 9:15 AM

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." -- Abba Eban

"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"Nothing Important Happened Today." -- Diary entry of King George III for July 4th, 1776

"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do." -- ???

"It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit." -- Harry S. Truman

"When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice." -- Otto Von Bismarck

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetant" -- Isaac Asimov

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" -- Voltaire

"Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind" -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H L Mencken

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison

"The American Republic will fall when the politicians learn they can bribe people with their own money." -- Alexis de Tocqueville

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." -- James Madison

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." -- Sen. Carl Schurz (R-MO), 1872

"The Horkheimer Effect: The odds of it being cloudy are directly proportional to the importance of an astronomical event." -- unknown

"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"...the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction." -- Arthur Koestler

"Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force." -- Thomas Sowell

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency." --Theodore Roosevelt

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Julius Caesar [Not an actual quote???]

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal

"Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live." -- Socrates

"Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this county is closely related with this." -- Albert Einstein

"interest, n.: What borrowers pay, lenders receive, stockholders own, and burned out employees must feign." -- Unknown

"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -- Ali ibn Abi Talib

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." -- Thomas Jefferson

"When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis

"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller

"There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves.

Only when you understand that - can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: 'Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.'

It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country!

What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded... sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor." - Ernst Janning

"There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else." -- Andrew Carnegie

"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition." --Alan Mathison Turing

"More and more we hear of shooting sprees and rampages in the news. Some can be prevented, some can not." -- Eric Harris, December, 1997

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." -- Winston Churchill

"This is why I go to slashdot. I don't comprehend a frigging word of the debate, but two people slapping each other with equations over the exact number of neutrinos from a North Korean nuclear test makes me all warm and fuzzy inside." -- http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199795&cid=16363185

"The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes" -- Adolf Hitler

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." -- Mark Twain

"Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others." -- Bobby Kennedy

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." -- Aristotle

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is seldom liberty of any kind that is lost all at once." --David Hume

"There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness." - H.L. Mencken