"If there aren't any whaling ships, then whales may survive. Anything short of that is so much hot air."

“In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.”

“To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you’re all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary.”

“One of the first things they teach stockbrokers is to stay out of the stock market. Brokers make their pile from selling advice, and from commissions on stock transactions. They can't predict the market, and few risk their own money. They, at least, only affect their clients' fortunes. Economists, though, can ruin the lot of us with their advice — yet if no science can predict a relatively closed system like the stock market, how the devil are you going to 'fine tune' something a large as the American economy? I'd think it arrogant to try; as arrogant as the man with three illiterate drug-addicted spoiled brats writing a book on parenting.”

“The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.”

“I thought MAD was truly insane when we first adopted it, and I haven't changed my opinion.”

“I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location.”