Linux Definitions

The Fifth Rule:
        You have taken yourself too seriously.

The First Rule of Program Optimization:
        Don't do it.

The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
        Don't do it yet.
                -- Michael Jackson

The five rules of Socialism:
        (1) Don't think.
        (2) If you do think, don't speak.
        (3) If you think and speak, don't write.
        (4) If you think, speak and write, don't sign.
        (5) If you think, speak, write and sign, don't be surprised.
                -- being told in Poland, 1987

The Following Subsume All Physical and Human Laws:
        (1) You can't push on a string.
        (2) Ain't no free lunches.
        (3) Them as has, gets.
        (4) You can't win them all, but you sure as hell can lose them all.

The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:
        He who has the gold makes the rules.

The Gordian Maxim:
        If a string has one end, it has another.

The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
        The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in courtship,
        his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks.
        Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods of
        time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
        Hedgehog Eater.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
        You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.

The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, although here the phases
are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy.  Thus:

Retribution:
        I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother.
Anticipation:
        I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother.
Diplomacy:
        I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the
        pretext that your brother did it.

The Illiterati Programus Canto 1:
        A program is a lot like a nose: Sometimes it runs, and
        sometimes it blows.