“TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.”
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Ambrose Bierce 204
American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabu… 1842–1914Related quotes

“If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.”

Interview with "El País", 2009.

“The good conscience is an invention of the devil.”
Variant translation: The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)

"Non-cooperative Games" in Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 54, No. 2 (September 1951)<!-- ; as cited in Can and should the Nash program be looked at as a part of mechanism theory? (2003) by Walter Trockel -->
1950s
Context: The writer has developed a “dynamical” approach to the study of cooperative games based upon reduction to non-cooperative form. One proceeds by constructing a model of the preplay negotiation so that the steps of negotiation become moves in a larger non-cooperative game [which will have an infinity of pure strategies] describing the total situation. This larger game is then treated in terms of the theory of this paper [extended to infinite games] and if values are obtained they are taken as the values of the cooperative game. Thus the problem of analyzing a cooperative game becomes the problem of obtaining a suitable, and convincing, non-cooperative model for the negotiation.
The writer has, by such a treatment, obtained values for all finite two-person cooperative games, and some special n-person games.

“A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.”
As quoted in O Rare Don Marquis, a Biography, by Edward Anthony (1962), Ch. 11

“Bacchus, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.”
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)