When Insults Had Class

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

–Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

–Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

–William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

—Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”

–Groucho Marx

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

–Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”

–Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend... if you have one.”

–George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”

–Winston Churchill’s response to George Bernard Shaw

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”

–Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”

–John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”

–Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”

–Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”

–Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.”

–Walter Kerr

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

–Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”

–Mae West

“Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee!”

–Lady Astor to Winston Churchill at a dinner party

“Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it!”

–Winston Churchill’s response to Lady Astor

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."

—Moses Hadas

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."

—Jack E. Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."

—Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."

—Thomas Brackett Reed

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them."

—James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."

—Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."

—Forrest Tucker

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any one I know."

—Abraham Lincoln

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

—Mae West

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts — for support rather than illumination."

—Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."

—Billy Wilder

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”

–Oscar Wilde

"You, Mr. Wilkes, will die either of the pox or on the gallows."

–The Earl of Sandwich

"That depends, my lord, whether I embrace your mistress or your principles."

–John Wilkes's response to The Earl of Sandwich

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."

—Winston Churchill

From You've Got Laughs! The Big Book of Internet Humor by Al Lowe,

ATRE

History Behind brand names....

Apache

It got its name because its founders got started by applying patchesto code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy'server - thus, the name Apache.

Jakarta
(project from Apache)A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web serverhandling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room atSUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.

Tomcat
The servlet part of the Jakarta project. Tomcat was the code name forthe JSDK 2.1 project inside SUN.

C
Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it'New B'. He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompsonas a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wifeBonnie).

C++
Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then'new C'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C'which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time RickMascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C.

GNU
A species of African antelope. Founder of the GNU project RichardStallman liked the name because of the humor associated with itspronunciation and was also influenced by the children's song 'The GnuSong' which is a song sung by a gnu. Also it fitted into the recursiveacronym culture with 'GNU's Not Unix'.

Java
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree thatstood outside his window, the programming team had to look for asubstitute, as there was no other language with the same name. Javawas selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of thecoffee that the programmers drank.

LG
Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Linux
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system, which hereplaced by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix).He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax(free + freak + x). His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to uploadit to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus adirectory called Linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the nameFreax. (Linus's parents named him after two-time Nobel Prize winnerLinus Pauling).

Mozilla
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replaceMosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-KillerGodzilla). The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it wasre-christened Netscape Navigator.

Red Hat
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap(with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. Helost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the betaversion of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his RedHat if found by anyone!

SAP
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4ex-IBM employees who used to work in the'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

SCO
(UNIX)From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz.

UNIX
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information andComputing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project,Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler versionof the OS. They needed the OS to run the game Space War that wascompiled under MULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating andComputing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

Xerox
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry'(as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailingwet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.

3M
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining thematerial corundum used to make sandpaper.

Mercedes
This was actually the financier's daughter's name.

Adobe
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apple
Computers It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three monthslate in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call hiscompany Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest abetter name by 5 O'clock.

CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.

Compaq
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote asmall integral object.

Corel
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. Itstands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.

Google
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of informationthe search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100zeros. After founders Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and LarryPage presented their project to an angel investor, they received acheque made out to 'Google'

Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from acomputer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with thebusiness plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names endingin 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included! the letters"html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It wasinitially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.

Hewlett Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether thecompany they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard orPackard-Hewlett.

Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'MooreNoyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they hadto settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes)
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditationof Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted toMICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft! , the '-'was removed later on.

Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company startedmanufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the timewas called Victrola.

ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project forthe CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the projectwas called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers toall questions or something such). The project was designed to help usethe newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually wasterminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started andbring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMSengine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

Sony
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' aslang used ! by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym forStanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built amicrocomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy tomanufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop aUNIX-based OS for the computer.

Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive inappearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yangand David Filo selected the name because they considered themselvesyahoos.