Khyron's Less Than Familiar Quotations backwards Edition N-L

N
Nebraska
Nebraska is proof that Hell is full and the dead walk the earth.
-Liz Winston

Necessity
In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat.
-Robert Byrne

How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?
-Avatar, God’s Debris by Scott Adams

Normality
I don't want to be
Normal like you.
-Everclear, "Normal Like You"

M
Management
Nothing is more critical to your happiness than learning to manage your boss. The alternative can be a disaster. If your boss tries to turn the tables and manage you, the next thing you know, you'll be doing moronic things in return for money.
-Scott Adams, The Joy of Work

As far as I can tell every layer of management exists for the sole purpose of warning us about the layer above.
-Alice, a Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams reprinted in The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

A retarded chimpanzee can drink a case of beer and still perform most management functions.
-Scott Adams, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

Being a midlevel manager is like being a fisherman, except instead of having an efficient fishing tool, such as a fishing pole or a net or dynamite, you have to talk the fish into surrendering.
-Scott Adams, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

Marketing
For example, scholars have long debated why the pyramids are pointy. One theory is that the Pharaoh’s marketing department designed the pyramids in the shape of their own heads.
-The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

Another theory is that the marketing department came up with the name “pyramids,” and everyone agreed that it sounded like something pointy.
-The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

To me, it’s obvious that marketing wasn’t responsible for the shape of the pyramids. In those days, if your only skill was marketing, your contribution to major construction projects was in the capacity of tile grout.
-The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

It took thousands of years before people who had no useful skills realized they could earn money by wearing nice clothes and designing deceptive brochures.
-The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

Mediocrity
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
-Jean Giraudoux

Meetings
Maybe meetings have become a lifeform capable of calling themselves and thus reproducing via human hosts.
-Dilbert in When Body Language Goes Bad, a Dilbert collection by Scott Adams

Dilbert: I just had a good meeting.
Dogbert: Maybe it just didn’t last long enough to reveal the incompetence of the attendees.
Dilbert: That’s what I call a good meeting.
Dogbert: I’m having a bad meeting.
-When Body Language Goes Bad, a Dilbert collection by Scott Adams

Miracles
"Sounds like a miracle to me," croaked Brutha. "Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle."
-Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Modern Times
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
-Ovid, Born 43 B.C., Died AD 17

O tempora! O mores!
[Translates to: What an age! What moral standards!]
-Cicero, Born 106 B.C., Died 43 B.C.

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!
-Catullus, Born 84 B.C. Died 54 B.C.

Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this.
-Gustave Flaubert, Born December 21, 1821, Died May 8, 1880

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
-former President Gerald R. Ford

Everything is still the same. It’s just a little different now.
-George Carlin, Brain Droppings

Monarchy
The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -kingons, or possibly queons- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they stike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.
-Terry Pratchett, Mort

Kings were always killing one another or being killed.
-Terry Pratchett, Mort

Since it was clear that being king was no picnic it was amazing that half the cast were apparently trying to become one.
-Terry Pratchett, Mort

Money
This looks like a job for legal tender.
-The Tick, The Tick: “The Tick vs. Brainchild”

A man can’t get rich if he takes proper care of his family.
-Navajo saying

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
-William Jennings Bryan

This week I kicked off the "Wally Compensation Equilibrium Project." My goal is to lower the quality of my work until it is consistent with my salary. I'd go on, but I just achieved equilibrium.
-Wally, a Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams reprinted in The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

Monkeys
Pointy-haired Boss: Have you ever seen monkey brains?
Wally: Once, when you flared your nostrils.
When Body Language Goes Bad, a Dilbert collection by Scott Adams

Yorick, your monkey has problems. He tried to have sex with my arm last night!
-Agent 355 in Y The Last Man Book 1: Unmanned, written by Brian K. Vaughn

Motivation
Why do I even bother trying to moralify these people?
Pointy-haired Boss in a Dilbert comic by Scott Adams reprinted in Positive Attiitude

Music
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
-George Santayana

Only sick music makes money today.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.
-Voltaire

L
Laughter
On the other hand, I choose to live, and to laugh, not because it matters, but because that choice is the bent of my nature.
-Don Juan, as quoted in A Seperate Reality: Further converstions with Don Juan by Carlos Castenada

While mad laughter was always part of a witch's stock-in-trade in necessary circumstances, this was insane mad laughter, the worst kind.
-Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

The Law
Law is a bottomless pit.
-John Arbuthnot

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
-Benjamin Disraeli

No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. Nor does he feel guilt for breaking it.
-Brian Smith in To Sail Beyond The Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein


Life
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
-Samuel Butler

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
-William Blake

People who see life as anything other than pure entertainment are missing the point.
-George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
-George Santayana

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
-John Lennon

The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry.
-John Lennon

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another –it is one damn thing over and over.
-Edna St. Vincent Malay

Pointy-Haired Boss: Every employee will wear a button that says "I'm Empowered."
Asok: I don't want to.
Pointy-Haired Boss: You have to.
Wally: That was everything you need to know about life in one package.
-A Dilbert comic strip in When Body Language Goes Bad by Scott Adams

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
-Marcus Aurelius

Why torture yourself when life will do it for you?
-Laura Walker

Lists
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
-Dorothy Parker, “Inventory”

Logic
My favorite part was when he yelled, "Stop ruining my slogan's with your logic!"
-Wally quoting the Pointy-Haired Bossed in a Dilbert strip by Scott Adams reprinted in Thriving On Vague Objectives

Love
Love is love’s reward.
-John Dryden

It's all right to tell me
What you think about me.
I won't try to argue
Or hold it against you.
I Know that you're leaving;
You must have your reasons.
-Blink-182, "Dammit"

By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying-
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
-Dorothy Parker, “Unfortunate Coincidence”

And maybe I'll see you,
At a movie sneak preview;
You'll show up and walk by,
On the arm of that guy,
And I'll smile,
And you'll wave,
And pretend that it's okay.
This charade, it won't last.
-Blink-182, "Dammit"