Quotes about fix
page 3

“You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Books, Way, Error, Motivation

“If the world is ending, a woman will want time to fix her hair. If the world's ending, a woman will take time to to tell a man something he's done wrong.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Matrim Cauthon
(15 October 1994)
Source: The Wheel of time series by Robert Jordan

World, Time

“You are incredibly wise. (Kat)
Only when it comes to other people. It’s easy to see how to fix their lives. It’s much harder to see the cracks in your own house. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

People, Housing

“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Law

“Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", page 13
Context: The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

“I have become convinced that God thoroughly enjoys fixing and saving things that are broken. That means that no matter how hurt and defeated you feel, no matter how badly you have been damaged, God can repair you. God can give anyone a second chance.”

Melody Carlson (1956) American writer

Source: Damaged: A Violated Trust

God, Feeling, Chance, Hurt

“What brings you onto my property?" Rhev said, cradling his mug with both hands trying to absorb its warmth.
Got a problem"
I can't fix your personality, sorry”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

Problem, Personality

“Well then," Faye said. "Now that you've heard our story, we have just one question to ask you." She fixed Cassie with an odd half smile and said in a sweet, false voice, "Are you planning to be a good witch or a bad witch?”

L.J. Smith book The Initiation

Source: The Initiation

Smile, Question, Falseness

“Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule”

Donald A. Norman (1935) American academic

Source: Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

Learning

“They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

Change

“I tried to shake some water off. "I got a message from Angel,"i said, scanning the tunnel."She says there's massive danger down here, something too big for us to fix or deal with."
"So of course you immediately came down.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Angels, Water

“Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

“I am a camera, with its shutter open. Someday, all of this will be developed, printed, fixed.”

Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) English novelist

“Tired, but not the kind of tired that sleep fixes.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Sleep

“I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Way, Understanding, Thinking, Country

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl

Howl (1956)

Madness, Night

“A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed cormulas about good and evil.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Life, Sense, Evil

“You seem to be under the impression that I work for you and you can give me orders. Let me fix that." I hung up.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

“Doctor."" Gideon set one ankle on the opposite knee and settled back, creating a picture of unyielding decisiveness.
""The only way I'm keeping my hands off her is if I'm dead. Find another way to fix us.""”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Chapter 3 pg 50
Source: Reflected in You

Way, Decision, Dead

“Amy," Elsie Moore said in her crackling voice, her gaze fixed on Declan. "I want you to get me a new bear. A blond one.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

“I carry thoughts of you like my own personal constellation. How far away you are, my dearest friend, but no farther than those fixed stars in my soul.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

Soul, Star, Personality

“Things rarely get fixed the way they need to be.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Way

“I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man of My Dreams

Life, Feeling, Time

“Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.”

Martin Amis book Time's Arrow

Source: Time's Arrow

Change

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Life

“The world may need fixing, but it's worth preserving.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

World

“You'll fix me, because we're parabatai. We're forever.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“What sucks the worst is… this world was a gift to us, and we broke it, and part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can't. We try, but we can't.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

World, Parting

“If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Training

“Any damage that's been done, you have to fix yourself because it needs fixing and there is nobody else to do the work. Blame may well be justified, but it's not going to move you forward in your life.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

Life

“Grover and Nico came back from their walk, and Grover helped me fix up my wounded arm.
"It's green!" Nico said with delight.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Help

“History is is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 39

People, History

“I could have fixed almost everything else, but death defeated me every time.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Death, Time

“Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Memory

“… life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin.”

Mark Z. Danielewski Only Revolutions

Source: Only Revolutions

Life

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Luck of the Bodkins

Source: The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

World, Law, Girl, Lovers

“History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

History, Past, Future, Dead

“I want you to know, my dear friend, that without you, I would not be the person I am today." He leaned in close and whispered, "I was a broken boy, and you fixed me. Thank you.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Boy, Personality

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Law, Idea, Time

“The world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

World, Problem

“that's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to makes sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself". (p. 717)”

Wally Lamb (1950) american novelist

Source: The Hour I First Believed

History, Understanding, Sense

“You can't fix stupid!”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

Source: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability

Stupidity

“Fix your mind on truth, hold firm to virtue, rely on loving kindness, and find your recreation in the Arts.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects

Love, Truth, Art

“The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

Sense

“They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.”

Isaac Asimov book Pebble in the Sky

Source: Pebble in the Sky

Truth, Change, Past

“It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.”

Sinclair Lewis book It Can't Happen Here

Source: It Can't Happen Here

“…I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God (1994)

Life, People, Way

“It's never too late to fix things with people you love, Massie. Kendra said.

That's true. William agreed.”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

Source: Boys "R" Us

Love, People

“She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this.
And when hope is gone, time is punishment.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Hope, Time

“Tiny-perhaps." Rovender kept his eyes fixed on the rings. "Insignificant-never, Eva Nine. No living thing is insignificant.”

Tony DiTerlizzi The Search for WondLa

Source: The Search for WondLa

“You fixed yourself. You didn’t need me.”

“No, Sydney.” My voice was ragged. “I do need you. You have no idea how much I need you.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Idea

“I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life, Dreams, Mountain, Change

“He made eye contact but he kept it like casual observation, not a fixed stare. He held his arms at his sides, not only because it was less threatening, but they'd be able to fend off a blow. He cleared the doorway so he'd have an escape route.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

“Sometimes you have to admit that a relationship can't be fixed. That no matter how much you want to, you can't trust some people.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Cross My Heart, Hope to Die

People

“It always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Heart of the Matter

“Inertia iseasy—don't fix what's not broken. Leave well enough alone. So we end up accepting whatbroken, mistaking complaining for action, procrastinating for deliberation.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Memory

“Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can't fix anything. And your life might turn out full of regrets.”

Jenny Colgan (1972) British writer

Source: The Little Shop of Happy Ever After

Life

“You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Morality for Beautiful Girls

Source: Morality for Beautiful Girls

“I fix myself a hot chocolate because it is a gateway drug to reading.”

Helen Ellis (1950) American writer

Source: American Housewife

Reading

“Come to me all who are weary and heavy burden.." Go to the throne, not the phone. The people on the other end aren't qualified to fix your problems, they don't know what they're doing either!!! ~ -Joyce Meyers”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

People, Problem

“We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”

Sarah Vowell book Take the Cannoli

Source: Take the Cannoli

Thinking

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure, World, Peace, Law

“Evidently, Ted had walked down the block from his own house and entered with the intention of fixing something. Now Ted was broken, too, and beyond repair.”

Dean Koontz book Watchers

Part 1, Chapter 7.7; about the death of Travis's landlord, Ted Hockney
Watchers (1987)

Housing

“Economic principles underlie the overall structure of the software lifecycle, and its primary refinements of prototyping, incremental development, and advancemanship. The primary economic driver of the life-cycle structure is the significantly increasing cost of making a software change or fixing a software problem, as a function of the phase in which the change or fix is made.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: Software engineering economics. (1984), p. 4

Life, Problem, Change

“One operator is no big deal. That can be fixed in a jiffy.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199809151814.LAA22396@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“What is the true End of Monarchy? Not to deprive People of their natural Liberty; but to correct their Actions, in order to attain the supreme Good.
The Form of Government, therefore, which best attains this End, and at the same Time sets less Bounds than others to natural Liberty, is that which coincides with the Views and Purposes of rational Creatures, and answers the End, upon which we ought to fix a steadfast Eye in the Regulations of civil Polity.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

People, Nature, Time

“Once the basic assumption of the superiority and attraction of fixed-field farming over all previous forms of subsistence is questioned, it becomes clear that this assumption itself rests on a deeper and more embedded assumption that is virtually never questioned. And that assumption is that sedentary life itself is superior to and more attractive than mobile forms of existence.”

James C. Scott book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Source: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017), pp. 7-8

Life, Question

“Our time is fixed, and all our days are number'd;
How long, how short, we know not this we know,
Duty requires we calmly wait the summons,
Nor dare to stir till Heaven shall give permission.”

Robert Blair The Grave

Part I, line 417.
The Grave (1743)

Time, Waiting

“I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

ThurgoodMarshall.com, Speeches. Constitutional Speech http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/speeches/constitutional_speech.htm (May 6, 1987)

Wisdom, War, Justice, Sense

“Everyone can see that philosophy can have her belief in a millennium, but her millennarianism is not Utopian, since the Idea can help, though only from afar, to bring the millennium to pass. The only question is: Does Nature reveal anything of a path to this end? And I say: She reveals something, but very little. This great revolution seems to require so long for its completion that the short period during which humanity has been following this course permits us to determine its path and the relation of the parts to the whole with as little certainty as we can determine, from all previous astronomical observation, the path of the sun and his host of satellites among the fixed stars. Yet, on the fundamental premise of the systematic structure of the cosmos and from the little that has been observed, we can confidently infer the reality of such a revolution.
Moreover, human nature is so constituted that we cannot be indifferent to the most remote epoch our race may come to, if only we may expect it with certainty. Such indifference is even less possible for us, since it seems that our own intelligent action may hasten this happy time for our posterity. For that reason, even faint indications of approach to it are very important to us.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Eighth Thesis
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

Happiness, Confidence, Star, Intelligence

“No, reprobate! You are a castaway - be off, or I'll hurt you seriously! I'll have you all modeled in wax and clay; and the first who passes the limits I fix, shall — I'll not say what he shall be done to — but, you'll see! Go, I'm looking at you!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Linton to Joseph (Ch. III).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Hurt

“Oh, no! It is impossible. War is a kind of game, and has its fixed rules, whereby, when we are well acquainted with them, we can pretty correctly tell how the trial will go. Tomorrow it seems, the die is to be cast, and, in my judgement, without the least chance on our side. The militia will, I suppose as usual, play the back game. That is, get out of battle as fast as their legs will carry them. But that, you know, won't do for me. I am an old soldier, and cannot run, and I believe I have some brave fellows that will stand by me to the last. So, when you hear of our battle, you will probably hear that your old friend, De Kalb, is at rest.”

Johann de Kalb (1721–1780) American general

In August 1780, as quoted in "Death of Baron De Kalb" https://books.google.com/books?id=k2QAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=%22I+thank+you+sir+for+your+generous+sympathy,+but+I+die+the+death+I+always+prayed+for:+the+death+of+a+soldier+fighting+for+the+rights+of+man%22&source=bl&ots=-93hJzoCYU&sig=tAag8ObQI-ZjiII56viczov02wM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VlYVVcuJI4KmNsazgYgL&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20thank%20you%20sir%20for%20your%20generous%20sympathy%2C%20but%20I%20die%20the%20death%20I%20always%20prayed%20for%3A%20the%20death%20of%20a%20soldier%20fighting%20for%20the%20rights%20of%20man%22&f=false (1849), by Benjamin Franklin Ells, The Western Miscellany, Volume 1, p. 233. 1780s

War, Game, Chance

“Childhood lays itself out, like a novel, he suggests, complete with central observer, fixed characters, and linear plot. Later, life disperses itself into anecdotes. At twenty-one, it no longer strictly matters whether the author went first to Ireland and then to Spain, or Spain first. And after thirty, he could stitch the pages in backward for all we care.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"V. S. Pritchett: Midnight Oil," p. 224
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Life, Childhood

“American civil rights activist and U. S. Army Sergeant Medgar Evers once said that "you can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea." His statement applies to both good and evil. Drones are powerful assassination weapons that offer short-term fixes. Drones kill terrorists, but not the idea of terrorism in the long term.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Idea, Evil

“You do not believe that souls are assigned, first to one body and then to another, and that our so-called death is merely a change of abode? You do not believe that in cattle, or in wild beasts, or in creatures of the deep, the soul of him who was once a man may linger? You do not believe that nothing on this earth is annihilated, but only changes its haunts? And that animals also have cycles of progress and, so to speak, an orbit for their souls, no less than the heavenly bodies, which revolve in fixed circuits? Great men have put faith in this idea; therefore, while holding to your own view, keep the whole question in abeyance in your mind. If the theory is true, it is a mark of purity to refrain from eating flesh; if it be false, it is economy. And what harm does it do to you to give such credence? I am merely depriving you of food which sustains lions and vultures.”

Sotion (Pythagorean) ancient greek philosopher

Quoted in Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius, CVIII, 20-21.

Death, Men, Faith, Food

“Originally UML was intended to serve as a specification language. But a specification is primarily intended to describe properties of systems that the system developers want to be valid, but to leave open other properties that are not clear already. Today this is partly achieved by having a semantics that is rather vague (and here we mean imprecise as opposed to not detailed). However, this is not an advantage, as the developer cannot fix this kind of impreciseness within UML, but can adapt the individual interpretation only. Furthermore, to get complete (and therefore executable) UML descriptions, often certain details have to be specified, which the developer does not yet know or wants to leave open to a later phase of development or even implementation. It is an intrinsic problem of executable languages that this kind of over-specification frequently occurs. Instead it would be of some help to have flexible concepts of under-specification to postpone detail decisions to situations, where the decisions can and must be made.”

Bernhard Rumpe (1967) German computer scientist

Bernhard Rumpe (1998) " A Note on Semantics (with an Emphasis on UML) http://sse-tubs.de/~rumpe/publications/papers/RUM98a/RUM98a.pdf." Proceedings of Second ECOOP Workshop on Precise Behavioral Semantics. 1998.

Problem, Decision, Help

“The horrors of [Vivisection] have supplanted the solemnity, the thrilling fascination, of the old unetherized operation upon the human sufferer. Their recorded phenomena, stored away by the physiological inquisitor on dusty shelves, are mostly of as little present use to man as the knowledge of a new comet or of a tungstate of zirconium: perhaps to be confuted the next year, perhaps to remain as fixed truth of immediate value, — contemptibly small compared with the price paid for it in agony and torture.”

Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818–1890) American surgeon

Source: Surgical Anaesthesia (1894), p. 309

Truth, Knowledge, Suffering

“[My] approach recognizes the basic principle of a written Constitution. We "the people" adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning, a meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution. Aside from amendment according to Article V, the Constitution’s meaning cannot be updated, or changed, or altered by the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the President. Of course, even when strictly interpreted as I believe it should be, the Constitution remains a modern, "breathing" document as some like to call it, in the sense that the Court is constantly required to interpret how its provisions apply to the Constitutional questions of modern life. Nevertheless, strict interpretation must never surrender to the understandably attractive impulse towards creative but unwarranted alterations of first principles.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2 February 2001.
2000s

Life, People, Understanding, Question

“Women must be trained to fight in houses, prepare explosive belts and blow themselves up alongside enemy soldiers. Anyone with a car must prepare it and know how to install explosives and turn it into a car-bomb. We must train women to place explosives in cars and blow them up in the midst of enemies, and blow up houses so that they can collapse on enemy soldiers. Traps must be prepared. You have seen how the enemy checks baggage: we must fix these suitcases in order for them to explode when they open them. Women must be taught to place mines in cupboards, bags, shoes, children's toys so that they explode on enemy soldiers.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Speech to the women of Sabha, October 4 2003; cited in ilfoglio.it http://www.ilfoglio.it/zakor/82 Speeches Variant: The woman must be trained to fight inside the houses, to prepare an explosive belt and to blow herself up with the enemy soldiers. Anyone with a car has to prepare it and know how to fix the explosive and turn it into a car bomb. We have to train women to dispose of explosives in cars and make them explode in the midst of the enemy, to blow up the houses to make them collapse on enemy soldiers. You have to prepare traps. You have seen how the enemy controls the baggage: you have to manipulate these suitcases to make them explode when they open them. Women must be taught to undermine the cabinets, bags, shoes, children's toys, so that they burst on enemy soldiers.

Women, Children, Cars, Shoe

“The simple fact is that code quality tends to improve as you move between platforms… non-obvious bugs on Windows become VERY obvious in the Linux port and vice versa, and thus get fixed. So even the Windows gamers will win in all of this.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in, "Chat with Ryan Gordon" http://web.archive.org/web/20010502182109/http://www.descent-3.com/pad/news/16.html Chrono's Pad (2001-02-11)

“The truth is the good of our knowing mind, upon which the mind fixes itself by nature; it is not granted to the mind to choose or not choose that good (truth!) on the basis, again, of knowledge. The finite mind does not comprehend itself so profoundly, and does not have such power over itself, that it follows its own light.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

Truth, Nature, Knowledge, Light

“The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

p.190 https://books.google.com/books?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:039300743X&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioupWF54_XAhUN6mMKHQdhBjcQ6AEIJjAA 1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Life

“Question: You wanna gut that safety net…
Ron Paul: But the safety net doesn't work.
Question: Tell me why it doesn't work.
Ron Paul: It does work for some people, but overall it ultimately fails, because you spend more money than you have, and then you borrow to the hilt. Now we have to borrow $800 billion a year just to keep the safety net going. It's going to collapse when the dollar collapses, you can't even fight the war without this borrowing. And when the dollar collapses, you can't take care of the elderly of today. They're losing ground. Their cost of living is going up about 10%, even though the government denies it, we give them a 2% cost of living increase.
Question: So do you think the gold standard would fix that?
Ron Paul: The gold standard would keep you from printing money and destroying the middle class. Every country where you have runaway inflation, there's no middle class. Mexico, there's no middle class, you have a huge poor class, and a lot of wealthy people. Today we have a growing poor class, and we have more billionaires than ever before. So we're moving into third world status…
Question: Who is the safety net that you're speaking of, who does benefit from all those programs and all those agencies?
Ron Paul: Everybody on a short term benefits for a time. If you build a tenement house by the government, for about 15 or 20 years somebody might live there, but you don't measure who paid for it: somebody lost their job down the road, somebody had inflation, somebody else suffered. But then the tenement house falls down after about 20 years because it's not privately owned, so everybody eventually suffers. But the immediate victims aren't identifiable, because you don't know who lost the job, and who had the inflation, the victims are invisible. The few people who benefit, who get some help from government, everyone sees, "oh! look what we did!", but they never say instead of what, what did we lose. And unless you ask that question, we'll go into bankruptcy, we're in the early stages of it, the dollar is going down, our standard of living is going down, and we're hurting the very people that so many people wanna help, especially the liberals…”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Mac McKoy on KWQW, December 17, 2007 http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lxo9WIR6w 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, People, World

“So long as man is protected by madness he functions and flourishes, but when he frees himself from the fruitful tyranny of fixed ideas, he is lost, ruined.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Idea, Madness

“You know, everyone thinks we got this broken down horse and fixed him, but we didn't. He fixed us. Every one of us. And I guess in a way, we fixed each other, too.”

Gary Ross (1956) American film director

Seabiscuit (2003)

Way, Thinking, Horse

“Against all these assertions Grotius published to the world a demonstration that no such rights could exist. His whole argument was mainly a development of two postulates. The first of these was that the right of nations to communicate with one another had been universally recognized; that it was based on a fundamental law of humanity; that the liberty of the sea being necessary to enable nations to communicate with one another, it could not be taken away by any power whatever. The second was that every attempt to make an ocean highway a monopoly of any single nation is forbidden by the immensity of the sea, its lack of stability, its want of fixed limits. This argument in places seemed thin. The book [Mare Liberum], after the custom of the time, was filled with an array—far more than sufficient—of learned citations; but its most significant feature—that which went to make it the herald of a new epoch—was that it took its stand upon the inalienable rights of mankind,—that it mainly deduced these rights neither from revelation nor from national enactments, but from natural law as ascertained by human reason.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 61

Books, World, Law, Communication

“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Quoted in 50 Military Leaders Who Changed the World‎ (2007) by William Weir, p. 173
Unsourced variant: Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man. Anything built by man, can be destroyed by him.

Stupidity

“There is another and very important ground for standardization and that is the desirability of having parts interchangeable. Standards of exchange have long been in general use, and these have, most usually, been fixed with a view to convenient use rather than on a scientific basis. The units of weight and measure are examples of this form of standard. They may not even be the most logical, or most convenient, but once established they can, in general, be changed only by slow degrees, if at all.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 42

Change, Parting

“The vision we have of conversational programming takes in much more than rapid turn around time and convenient debugging aids: our most interesting programs are never wrong and never final. […] What is new is the requirement to make variable in our languages what we had previously taken as fixed. I do not refer to new data classes now, but to variables whose values are programs or parts of programs, syntax or parts of syntax, and regimes of control.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Time, Parting

“I can't make people change, and I can't change myself. I can't change the political climate, or fix the myriad problems of the world, or make anyone else happy. When I think about these things, I feel impotent and sad. When I don't think about them, I am running away from the truth. Either way I lose.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

December 17
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Happiness, People, Truth, World

“However much the various phases of the French Revolution may have modelled themselves on Roman history — the early phase on Republican virtue, the later on Imperial grandeur — the fact remains that classicism depended on a fixed and rational philosophy; whereas the spirit of the Revolution was one of change and of emotion.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 1: David

History, Change, Dependency

“So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"Goodbye", line 1; p. 24.
Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945)

Lying, Lovers

“The secret to successful scrying was to realize that the future was not fixed and there was no way of predicting it. None. All one could do was to identify what already existed unacknowledged. Lovers pledged themselves to each other long before their first kiss. Murder was implicit in friendship. A carcinoma that looked like a speck of dust on the X-ray spelled death. So much of what appeared to be random event was simply the working out of consequences.”

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 13 (p. 222)

Death, Friendship, Secret, Way

“At the base of the plane, Styles freelance photographer is down on one knee, going handheld, still in the same Hawaiian shirt. The famously reclusive R. Vaughn Corliss is nowhere in view. Doug Llewellyn’s wardrobe furnished by Hugo Boss. The Malina blanket for the artist’s lap and thighs, however, is the last minute fix of a production oversight, retrieved from the car of an apprentice gaffer whose child is still nursing, and is not what anyone would call an appropriate color or design, and appears unbilled. There’s also some eleventh hour complication involving the ground level camera and the problem of keeping the commode’s special monitor out of its upward shot, since video capture of a camera’s own monitor causes what is known in the industry as feedback glare — the artist in such a case would see, not his own emergent Victory, but a searing and amorphous light.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

"The Suffering Channel", Oblivion: Stories
Short stories

Cars, Color, Problem, Light

“As professor in the Polytechnic School [autumn of 1858] in Zurich I found myself for the first time obliged to lecture upon the elements of the differential calculus and felt, more keenly than ever before, the lack of a really scientific foundation for arithmetic. In discussing the notion of the approach of a variable magnitude to a fixed limiting value, and especially in proving the theorem that every magnitude which grows continually, but not beyond all limits, must certainly approach a limiting value, I had recourse to geometric evidences. Even now such resort to geometric intuition in a first presentation of the differential calculus, I regard as exceedingly useful, from the didactic standpoint, and indeed indispensable, if one does not wish to lose too much time. But that this form of introduction into the differential calculus can make no claim to being scientific, no one will deny. For myself this feeling of dissatisfaction was so overpowering that I made the fixed resolve to keep meditating on the question till I should find a purely arithmetic and perfectly rigorous foundation for the principles of infinitesimal analysis.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

School, Feeling, Question, Autumn

“That is a known bug in 5.00550. Either an upgrade or a downgrade will fix it.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[6vu1vo%2489c@kiev.wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“If free market prices don't give people what they morally deserve, should we try to regulate factor prices so that they do track producers' moral deserts? Hayek offered two compelling arguments against this proposal. First, if you fix prices on a backward-looking standard, they will no longer be able to perform their informational function. Producers will produce for what was demanded last quarter, even if it isn't demanded today. This creates enormous waste and generates huge opportunity costs. We'd be much poorer in an economy that worked like this. […] Hayek was right. It might sound like a compelling idea, to make sure that people receive the income they morally deserve. But orienting the economy around this goal, assuming it is achievable at all (and there are principled doubts about that), would doom us to poverty and serfdom. It would abolish capitalism, along with its chief virtues. It isn't worth the draconian costs.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People, Idea

“After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind), I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

Game, Study

Quotes about fix page 3

Quotes about fix
page 3