Quotes about tape
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George Carlin photo

“Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

The actual author of this quote is Roger J. Corless, from his book "The Vision of Buddhism: the Space Under the Tree". The original quote is, "We make ourselves miserable by first closing ourselves off from reality and then collecting this and that in an attempt to make ourselves happy by possessing happiness. But happiness is not something I have, it is something I myself want to be. Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over my body." ( [Corless, Robert J., Vision of Buddhism: The Space Under the Tree, http://books.google.com/books?hl=de&id=KecGAAAAYAAJ&q=sandwiches#search_anchor, 2013-03-07, 1998, Paragon House, 1557782008, 20, 362] )
Misattributed

Robin Williams photo

“The sound crapped out for a bit, that's why I'm using SupposiSound! No one wants their tapes back, I wonder why.”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

A Night at the Met (1986)

Sean Hannity photo

“My first serious programming work was done in the very early 1960s, in Assembler languages on IBM and Honeywell machines. Although I was a careful designer — drawing meticulous flowcharts before coding — and a conscientious tester, I realised that program design was hard and the results likely to be erroneous. Into the Honeywell programs, which formed a little system for an extremely complex payroll, I wrote some assertions, with run-time tests that halted program execution during production runs. Time constraints didn't allow restarting a run from the beginning of the tape. So for the first few weeks I had the frightening task on several payroll runs of repairing an erroneous program at the operator’s keyboard ¾ correcting an error in the suspended program text, adjusting the local state of the program, and sometimes modifying the current and previous tape records before resuming execution. On the Honeywell 400, all this could be done directly from the console typewriter. After several weeks without halts, there seemed to be no more errors. Before leaving the organisation, I replaced the run-time halts by brief diagnostic messages: not because I was sure all the errors had been found, but simply because there would be no-one to handle a halt if one occurred. An uncorrected error might be repaired by clerical adjustments; a halt in a production run would certainly be disastrous.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Michael A. Jackson (2000), "The Origins of JSP and JSD: a Personal Recollection", in: IEEE Annals of Software Engineering, Volume 22 Number 2, pages 61-63, 66, April-June 2000.

Ann Coulter photo
Earl Warren photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Tommy Franks photo
Fred Thompson photo
Adrienne Rich photo
Eddie Vedder photo
David Fincher photo
John Major photo

“John Major: What I don't understand, Michael, is why such a complete wimp like me keeps winning everything.
Michael Brunson: You've said it, you said precisely that.
Major: I suppose Gus will tell me off for saying that, won't you Gus?
Brunson: No, no, no … it's a fair point. The trouble is that people are not perceiving you as winning.
Major: Oh, I know … why not? Because…
Brunson: Because rotten sods like me, I suppose, don't get the message clear [laughs].
Major: No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that - well partly that, yes, partly because of S-H-one-Ts like you, yes, that's perfectly right. But also because those people who are opposing our European policy have said the way to oppose the Government on the European policy is to attack me personally. The Labour Party started before the last election. It has been picked up and it is just one of these fashionable things that slips into the Parliamentary system and it is an easy way to proceed.
Brunson: But I mean you … has been overshadowed … my point is there, not just the fact that you have been overshadowed by Maastricht and people don't…
Major: The real problem is this…
Brunson: But you've also had all the other problems on top - the Mellors, the Mates … and it's like a blanket - you use the phrase 'masking tape' but I mean that's it, isn't it?
Major: Even, even, even, as an ex-whip I can't stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not, and various things like that. But the real problem is…
Brunson: I've heard other people in the Cabinet say 'Why the hell didn't he get rid of Mates on Day One?' Mates was a fly, you could have swatted him away.
Major: Yeah, well, they did not say that at the time, I have to tell you. And I can tell you what they would have said if I had. They'd have said 'This man was being set up. He was trying to do his job for his constituent. He had done nothing improper, as the Cabinet Secretary told me. It was an act of gross injustice to have got rid of him'. Nobody knew what I knew at the time. But the real problem is that one has a tiny majority. Don't overlook that. I could have all these clever and decisive things that people wanted me to do and I would have split the Conservative Party into smithereens. And you would have said, Aren't you a ham-fisted leader? You've broken up the Conservative Party.
Brunson: No, well would you? If people come along and…
Major: Most people in the Cabinet, if you ask them sensibly, would tell you that, yes. Don't underestimate the bitterness of European policy until it is settled - It is settled now.
Brunson: Three of them - perhaps we had better not mention open names in this room - perhaps the three of them would have - if you'd done certain things, they would have come along and said, 'Prime Minister, we resign'. So you say 'Fine, you resign'.
Major: We all know which three that is. Now think that through. Think it through from my perspective. You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Brunson: They create a lot of fuss but you have probably got three damn good ministers in the Cabinet to replace them.
Major: Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there? What's the Lyndon Johnson, er, maxim?
Brunson: If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Major: No, that's not what I had in mind, though it's pretty good.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Andrew Culf, "What the `wimp' really said to the S-H-one-T", The Guardian, 26 July 1993.
'Off-the-record' exchange with ITN reporter Michael Brunson following videotaped interview, 23 July 1993. Neither Major nor Brunson realised their microphones were still live and being recorded by BBC staff preparing for a subsequent interview; the tape was swiftly leaked to the Daily Mirror.

“For as long as I can remember,' I said, continuing to speak to the figure standing in the archway, 'I have had an intense and highly aesthetic perception of what I call the icy bleakness of things. At the same time I have felt a great loneliness in this perception. This conjunction of feelings seems paradoxical, since such a perception, such a view of things, would seem to preclude the emotion of loneliness, or any sense of a killing sadness, as I think of it. All such heartbreaking sentiment, as usually considered, would seem to be on its knees before artworks such as yours, which so powerfully express what I have called the icy bleakness of things, submerging or devastating all sentiment in an atmosphere potent with desolate truths, permeated throughout with a visionary stagnation and lifelessness. Yet I must observe that the effect, as I now consider it, has been just the opposite. If it was your intent to evoke the icy bleakness of things with your dream monologues, then you have totally failed on both an artistic and an extra-artistic level. You have failed your art, you have failed yourself, and you have also failed me. If your artworks had really evoked the bleakness of things, then I would not have felt this need to know who you are, this killing sadness that there was actually someone who experienced the same sensations and mental states that I did and who could share them with me in the form of tape-recorded dream monologues. Who are you that I should feel this need to go to work hours before the sun comes up, that I should feel this was something I had to do and that you were someone that I had to know? This behavior violates every principle by which I have lived for as long as I can remember. Who are you to cause me to violate these long-lived principles?”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Bungalow House

Chris Rock photo

“If you wanna get away with murder, all you gotta do is shoot somebody in the head and put a demo tape in their pocket! "This is a rap killing. Let's go home!"”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Frederik Pohl photo
Ze Frank photo
Simon Cowell photo

“If I tape an 11-hour day, guess which parts end up on air. Not the bits when I'm pleasant, but the parts when I'm obnoxious.”

Simon Cowell (1959) English reality television judge, television producer and music executive

Quoted in interview, Playboy magazine (February 2007)
2000s

“The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.”

Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American writer

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume II, p. 82.

Linus Torvalds photo

“Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it;)”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message, linux-kernel mailing list, IU, 1996-07-20, Torvalds, Linus, 2014-04-26 http://www.webcitation.org/6P8EBZqQX,
1990s, 1995-99

Donald J. Trump photo

“Well, er, it wasn't, er, it wasn't very stupid, I can tell you that. [In response to the interviewer suggesting that his tweeting that there were tapes was a smart tactic]”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump interviewed by Ainsley Earhardt on Fox & Friends http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/23/trump-comey-tapes-tweet-mueller-probe-fox-friends-interview (23 June 2017)
2010s, 2017, June

Maia Mitchell photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Joe Satriani photo

“When I want to play music, you've got to get me on tape or else it goes.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in Guitar 2001 magazine, Issue #10, (Summer 2001).

Richard Rorty photo
Jeff Foxworthy photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“Dad joined the US Army by this point [1964], and initially he was stationed in Texas and then South Carolina. But the Vietnam war brought our normal life to an end. Once again, Dad was gone. Communications were very basic back then: Dad couldn't just pick up a cellphone and let us know he was okay. Months would go by without a letter or anything. Eventually he bought two tape recorders -- one he kept with him and one for our house. Dad used to talk into the recorder and send the tapes home. Then we would gather round our machine and tell Dad stories. And I would sing. I still have all the tapes, but I can't listen to them. It hurts too much. After Dad came back from Nam, he wasn't well. He'd been poisoned by Agent Orange and needed quite a lot of looking after. Mum was busy trying to get her Cuban qualifications revalidated by a US university, so I had to take care of Dad and my little sister [Becky]. It was tough. Toward the end, Dad was too far gone and he didn't really know what was hapening around him. I joined Miami Sound Machine in 1975 and we were getting quite successful, but Dad didn't even know who I was. He had to be moved to the hospital. On my wedding day in 1978 [September 2] I went to visit him, still wearing my wedding dress. That was the last time that he said my name. Dad died in 1980, but he touches my life every day. On my last album [Unwrapped] I did a lot of writing while I was looking at a picture of him in his younger days -- so happy and in the prime of his life. I'm not sure if he sees me, but I can feel him all around me. I hope he knows that I am so very proud of him.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Prince photo

“At this point, I wouldn't want to jinx it by meeting him. His arrangements are incredible. I just send him a tape, we talk on the phone, and he sends me the finished orchestra tracks. Hear that? I'm gonna get that chord on the radio!”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Discussing his then nearly decade-and-a-half-long working relationship with arranger Clare Fischer (whom he'd never met, nor ever would meet, face to face), as quoted in the January 2000 issue of Keyboard Magazine, reprinted in Keyboard Presents Synth Gods https://books.google.com/books?id=BMucfBTXvMgC&pg=PA97&dq=%22I+wouldn't+want+to+jinx+it%22+%22that+chord+on+the+radio%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=w2acVdevKIKYyASn3oCoBg&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (2011), edited by Ernie Rideout, p. 97

Alois Hába photo
Roger Manganelli photo
V. P. Singh photo
Kay Bailey Hutchison photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Norman G. Finkelstein photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, making sure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N'Roses, my favorite heavy metal [sic] band!"I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory was. Would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unlike "Silent Night") has one canonical version, so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patient's humming with the standard record and compare the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, the surgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. "Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!"Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do that," replied the neurosurgeon, "since I cut out that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?"”

I asked, and he replied, "No, I already told you — I hate rock music."</p>
Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 58-59

Erik Naggum photo

“Part of any serious QA is removing Perl code the same way you go over a dilapidated building you inherit to remove chewing gum and duct tape and fix whatever was kept together for real.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: can lisp do what perl does easily? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Perl

George S. Patton IV photo
Greg Giraldo photo

“Flav, you look like a skeleton wrapped in electrical tape.”

Greg Giraldo (1965–2010) American comedian

Flavor Flav Comedy Central Roast (2007)

Melania Trump photo

“You can see from the tape, the cameras were not on—it was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on. Because they were kind of, ah, boy talk. And he was led on. Like egg on from the host to say, uh, dirty and bad stuff.”

Melania Trump (1970) Slovenian model, wife of Donald Trump and First Lady of the United States

Regarding the leaked Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump and Billy Bush; Interview with Anderson Cooper http://time.com/4534216/melania-donald-trump-billy-bush-boy-talk/ (October 17, 2016)

Aaron Copland photo
Edwin Lefèvre photo
Jack Valenti photo

“We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)
Context: We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.

Bill Maher photo

“What got Van Jones fired was they caught him on tape saying that Republicans are assholes. And they call it "news." And Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

New Rule: Float Like Obama, Sting Like Ali (2009)
Context: What got Van Jones fired was they caught him on tape saying that Republicans are assholes. And they call it "news." And Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like we dropped "end of life counseling" from health care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page.
Crazy evil morons make up things for Obama to do, and he does it.

David Gilmour photo

“I had a listen, I was intrigued … by this strange voice, and I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent, and she played me, it must have been forty or fifty songs, on tape, and I thought, I should try to do something.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

… We were making — Pink Floyd was making the Wish You Were Here album, and I think we had the record company people down at Abbey Road, in number 3, and I said to them "Do you want to hear something I've got? And they said "sure", so we found another room, and I played it to them, "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and they said "Yep, thank you – we'll have it."
On first hearing 15-year-old Kate Bush's demo tapes, and meeting with her.
The Kate Bush Story (2014)

Jonathan Sacks photo
Charles Stross photo
George Carlin photo
Dave Grohl photo
Kay Bailey Hutchison photo

“Then came the dress, the tapes, and the Federal grand jury. The attempt to obstruct and cover-up grew, expanded, and developed a life of its own. It overpowered the underlying offense itself. A new strategy was required, fast: The President was advised: `Admit the sex, but never the lies.”

Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943) American politician

Shift the blame; change the subject. Blame it on the plaintiff in the Arkansas case. Blame it on her lawyers. Blame it on the Independent Counsel. Blame it on partisanship. Blame it on the majority members of the House Judiciary Committee. Blame it on the process.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's closed-door impeachment statement, CNN.com, CNN, February 12, 1999, 2007-07-21 http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12/senate.statements/hutchison.html,

Rod Blagojevich photo

“By the way, I should say, if anyone wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly.”

Rod Blagojevich (1956) Former Governor of Illinois

At a press conference, December 8, 2008, in Chicago, IL. CNN http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/09/illinois.governor/?iref=mpstoryview
About wiretaps

Alan Turing photo
Cui Jian photo

“I had a lot of friends who worked in foreign embassies so I had the chance to exchange music tapes. That's the way I listened to a lot of rock music at that time”

Cui Jian (1961) Chinese rock musician of Korean descent

"Chinese rock legend sings on" in BBC (25 August 2010) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11067241

“One shouldn't worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings. Those are superfluities of sedate lives. One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.”

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

Vera Stanley Alder photo