James Kemp > James's Quotes

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“One should never mistake pattern for meaning.”
― Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“Monty Python is like catnip for nerds. Once you get them started quoting it, they are constitutionally incapable of feeling depressed.”
― Kevin Hearne, Hounded

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that's just scratching the surface...”
― charles stross, The Jennifer Morgue

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sane employee in possession of his wits must be in want of a good manager.”
― Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum

“Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.”
― Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum

“Contract law is essentially a defensive scorched-earth battleground where the constant question is, “if my business partner was possessed by a brain-eating monster from beyond spacetime tomorrow, what is the worst thing they could do to me?”
― Charles Stross

“Let’s see.’ She fiddles with her terminal and the room card reader. ‘You’re in 403 and 404. Have a nice day.'
I hand Persephone the Forbidden Room card and keep Room Not Found for myself. She looks at me oddly.”
― Charles Stross, The Apocalypse Codex

“Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.”
― Marvin Bell

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
― Ray Bradbury

“One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”
― Alfred Wainwright, A Coast to Coast Walk