QuoteLog

“John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. No argument, it was true, they were. Well, even though the vast majority of people have never heard of Steve [Gillmor] or myself, we’re more influential than John Lennon or Bob Dylan ever were. We’re media hackers.”

“Blogger Dave Winer’s last words before his ego exploded.”

“Heinz Ketchup is an American treasure ... Heinz is the Ketchup Reference Standard. It’s the über-Ketchup. So please stop dissing it in a lame attempt to make Kerry look bad.”

“Sometimes I think the Web’s primary function is aggregating stupidity.”

“By finally admitting that he ‘saw both Ratt and Poison at the Ventura County Fairgrounds back in 1987,’ Matt Welch has effectively destroyed his chances of ever holding elected office.”

“Everyone tries to get along with Atrios, Kos and Drum on the left-side of the blogosphere. I certainly have. We e-mail them about stories we think they might be interested in and slip in some obeisance while we’re at it hoping for a link and increased exposure. It’s not much different, I’m sure, on the Right with Reynolds and Volokh. Offend Atrios and you’ll not only lose any chance of a link and readership coming from him, but maybe some other progressive bloggers in his sphere of influence.”

“When the Saudi people finally rise up in revolt and throw out the House of Saud, it won’t be for democratic reform, and it won’t be for an islamic republic. It’ll be about mobile phones.”

“We tell Kim Jong-Il that if he so much as glances in the direction of anyone remotely associated with Osama bin Laden, including the Pakistani ISI or the ‘government’ of Saudi Arabia, we will make his country look like a jamboree of Osirak reenactors.”

“The biggest impact, I still think, is that citizens will see themselves more and more as publishers, as co-participants in a discussion they were usually barred from previously.”

“Maybe someday we’ll live in a perfect libertarian world, where we drop tokens in the meter to walk on the privatized sidewalks to sell legal heroin to a tax-exempt hooker. But I’m not holding my breath.”

“You know, institutions worry about letting reporters blog without editing but they don’t worry about letting a jackass like this out without a leash.”

“I have a new life policy: ‘All other things being equal, avoid empowering lunatics.’ There are two difficult parts to this; one, that all other things are never actually equal, and two, that it’s harder than you might think to figure out who the lunatics are.”

“These words actually subtract value from the paper they’re printed on.”

“This is why I left Metafilter right after 9/11. They don’t mind if you’re angry. You can be angry about important things, like Microsoft security lapses and Ashcroft crusades. But 200 stories of skyscraper falling to the ground? Thousands dead, ten thousand orphaned, ten million mourning? Dude. Get a grip.”

“The amount of time the entire human population spends sitting in front of Windows boxes waiting for them to be ready to work is probably in aggregate worth the GDP of a medium-sized country.”

“The biggest boost ever for ‘web standards’ would be if Google gave an extra PageRank point or two to pages using valid markup. Overnight, the commercial web would start taking the issue seriously.”

“If we are eager for Iraqis and Iranians to blog, we certainly should be eager for AOLers to blog.”

“[Lawrence] Lessig looks like the cashier whose line you want to avoid at Starbucks.”

“What pathetic mindless idiots you all are. Don’t you get it. The Internet won’t make you rich, or famous, or happy. CSS isn’t a cause. You can’t beat Microsoft. It doesn’t matter. If you want someone to blame, blame your mommy for giving birth to you.”

“Somewhere on earth right now there’s a person that would like to do nothing but wear flowing golden robes and throw pickles at people in the street, and thanks to the web that person can connect with a group that also indulges in that specific activity, compare locations, techniques, and preferred robe fabrics.”

“But you look at these tanned, blow-dried gym bunnies like Brian Williams, NBC’s next anchor—all they do is read off a teleprompter, and no one has a problem calling them journalists. In the end I really don’t care what I’m called, as long as it’s not blogger.”

“Sure, his content is more intellectual than mine. Sure, his writing is clearer, his politics are more defined and his subject matter tends to be of world importance. But I have boobs and mp3s.”

“...all I can do is tell you what is going on in the streets and if you think journalists are doing a better job of that then maybe you should go read them. One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.”

“So given the fact that over the past 30 years we’ve been steadily cutting taxes on the rich, cutting federal spending, cutting welfare programs, and cutting Social Security, let’s ask the question again: How low is low enough? How much cutting of these programs will satisfy you?”

“Complaining about built-for-the-web content taking over the web, is like complaining about the cars when you’re trying to pogostick down the motorway.”

“In other words, if you choose not to participate on the public, freely linkable, not for pay Web, don’t complain when others who do participate by the rules of the game are easier to find.”

“The other day I made a comment on someone’s blog and I noticed I was the only one that put my online pseudonym into the name field. Everyone else posted as ‘Jane Doe’, ‘Bill Simpson’, etc.. Thirty real people and then there’s me with my cute name. How quaint. This is one of those moments when you notice you’re becoming a dinosaur.”

“It reminds me why ‘comedy’ used to be synonymous with ‘anti-conservative.’ We were funny, and they weren’t. That’s certainly changed a bit. Now there’s nothing more tiresome and annoying than a leftist, while the dreaded neo-cons and centrists get the laughs because the left is so target-rich: old hippies, idiot actors, ANSWER, Michael Moore, ‘nude for peace,’ Martin Sheen, etc. Never have so many fish crowded the barrel.”

“Give it up, dude. This is the Internet -- and now we can fact-check your ass from a satellite 22,400 miles high.”

“I think that a lot of us -- me included, sometimes -- are spending a lot of time reading minute-by-minute reports that are fragmentary and often wrong, and not enough time thinking about the big picture.”

“Hell, 15 dead: that’s a quiet day in the Arab world. Even imagining the United States was targeting civilians, its efforts are laughable compared with Saddam -- 5,000 dead in the chemical attack on Halabja in one day -- or Assad -- 30,000 shelled to death in Hama -- or pretty much any other Arab ruler. Arab governments -- and their press and public -- should first practice moral judgment on themselves and each other, before turning their outrage on the United States.”

“If the Republican Guard divisions are offering themselves outside the city, draw the diehards out, the better to destroy them. If the US is to demonstrate its ruthlessness, in a region which respects only power, let’s have the demonstration now, rather than during an extended occupation. And, if there is to be killing, let it be a slaughter of the regime’s shock troops, well away from the city, and civilians. With the Republican Guard and Baathist party forces destroyed, rather than slipping back into bitter anonymity, reform of Iraq might actually stand a chance.”

“A highly motivated, all-volunteer force of men and women raised in a democracy and armed with the finest equipment the world, are about to square off with equally motivated men raised in a brutal dictatorship and armed with legacy equipment.”

“Which brings us to post-war aim II: no more State Secrets, when it comes to the Saudis. Three thousand of us were murdered by 15 Saudis, and they were aiming for 30,000 or more. The relationship is sick, no matter what short-term benefits Bush & Co. wrangled out of their Riyadh pals in the buildup toward war. When the cease-fire is signed, I want to hear a Ten-Point program for the de-Saudization of our foreign policy, either from Bush or whatever Democrat recognizes the opportunity ... and more importantly, the responsibility.”

“It’s mindblowingly frustrating for me personally, that as I become increasingly convinced that Bush and his Administration are mendacious and lack the real clarity of moral vision and ability to broaden and sell that vision that is required to deal with the current world situation, I become more convinced that the people who oppose his policy are morons. It doesn’t leave me with a lot of places to stand on this.”

“And my question for the French and British is this: If the Security Council fails to constrain Saddam Hussein, what makes you think that it will constrain America? And how long can you demonize America as an imperialist power that doesn’t give a damn what other people think before it comes true? And do you want to live in that world?”

“Book burners are neither Nazis, nor Communists, nor religious nuts. They’re just people who have moved one too many times.”

“A syndication format that requires valid semantic XHTML markup? Spare me. 9 out of 10 bloggers can’t even spell XHTML.”

“I have a sick fantasy: lock up the inhabitants of Metafilter and Little Green Footballs in an arena, and let them whine each other to death.”

“I hope to eventually achieve web design nirvana, a state in which, if anyone can’t read my site, it’s their own damn fault.”

“I like knowing where my stuff is at all times. I don’t like the idea of dropping one of the twins out the window. And I don’t want my little soldier peeking out of the foxhole. Nope, the world out there is not safe, better to keep all my equipment in my rucksack.”

“The very existence of protestors in Washington DC is testament to the division of labor, by which factory workers build combine harvesters for farmers to produce grain, which Mexican immigrants turn into wraps for burritos to fuel the college kids in their struggle against global capitalism on the streets of DC, and, if the fascists send in the army, the kids will stake the rifles with flowers, fresh, and flown in that very day from Africa. Isn’t global capitalism wonderful?”

“I’m a geek. I’m a dweeb. I’m not ashamed of it.”

“We have to love our enemies, I know. But before last year I never saw how hard that could be. And that -- as much as I can’t stand to admit that I could ever feel this way -- is why I hate Al Qaeda.”

“I object to sacrificing in the name of a war when our leaders are acting in all other ways as if it’s not a war. If this be treason, then make the most of it.”

“Your website’s so ugly, blind folks asked you to remove your ALT tags.”

“Go blog yourself.”

“We’re all stringers for each other now.”

“The reporters want the Big Story, their own Watergate. They’ll try to get it out of something as ridiculous as a blowjob in the Oval Office, and they’re equally happy -- delighted, really -- to turn a savage mass murder by savage terrorists into a White House scandal.”

“The mere act of creating a public entity, however accidental, re-wires your brain, and makes previously impossible fantasies seem like amusing challenges.”

“Stability? Stability is for free nations.”

“We’ve got our anti-US forces. Lots of them. We’ve taken the precaution of rounding them up and keeping them penned in newspaper offices.”

“France is the insecure girl who mistreats her big lug of a boyfriend in public but always comes back crying when there’s trouble -- car won’t start, Nazis attacking, etc.”

“People like Doc Searls and Meg Hourihan are to the weblog as Oppenheimer and von Neumann were to the A-bomb. Gentle souls whose creation will be used by others more ruthless.”

“Meta-blogging gets too self-referential and people start to disappear up their own butts with loud popping sounds.”

“Where are all the Left-wing Bloggers? You’d think they’d be everywhere, given that Blogger technology is essentially in sync with leftist economic theories; ie, it’s given away to The People for free, and often collapses.”

“Enrongate or not, I’m glad to see Ken Lay retiring. Guy was stealing my Google hits.”