Quotes

Even though Mac Users may be only 10% of the market, always remember that we are the top 10%.

While I don't claim to be a great programmer, I try to imitate one. An important trait of the great ones is constructive laziness. They know that you get an A not for effort but for results.

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice.

UNIX was never designed to keep people from doing stupid things, because that policy would also keep them from doing clever things.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?

The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full huminity; and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague.

A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is forty-two.

If Windows is the solution, can we please have the problem back?

This is a fascinating property: Writing texts in programming languages can not only be as creative as poetry, the creations more than in poetry, belong to the real world as soon as run through the machine.

Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection. But that usually will create another problem.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order I may learn how to do it.

Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.

Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.

If we had no faults, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing them in others.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she's down there, but nobody wants to talk about her.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Under capitalism people exploit other people. Under communism it's the other way round.

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

Whatever limits us, we call Fate.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

It often takes more courage to change ones opinion than to keep it.

Let's be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self controlled.

Either you live or you are consequential.

Dummheit, die man bei anderen sieht, wirkt meist erhebend aufs Gemüt.

Es ist traurig eine Ausnahme zu sein. Aber noch viel trauriger keine zu sein.

Wenn man nicht weiss, was man tun soll, macht man am besten gar nichts.

In meinen Augen ist Konversation das, was jetzt kein Mensch mehr kennt: Nicht selber perorieren wie ein Wasserfall, sondern dem anderen das Stichwort bringen.

Wer auf bisher unbekannte Weise langweilig ist, gilt als amüsant.

Pedaled curd gets wide - not strong.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

She wore too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. Thats always a sign of despair in a woman.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Wherever it has been established that it is shameful to be involved with sexual relationships with men, that is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice on the part of the governed.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

We want to be poets of our life - first of all in the smallest most everyday matters.

Without music, life would be an error.

Joseph LaGrange believed that a mathematician has not thoroughly understood his own work till he has made it so clear that he can go out and explain it effectively to the first man he meets on the street.

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! but That's funny...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.

There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom.

Perfect nonviolence is the highest bravery.

Was man mit Gewalt gewinnt, kann man nur mit Gewalt behalten.

Gewaltlosigkeit darf niemals der Feigheit als Tarnung dienen. Sie ist die Waffe der Tapferen.

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

When the rich make war it's the poor that die.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong.

Es gibt viele Arten zu töten. Man kann einem ein Messer in den Bauch stecken, einem das Brot entziehen, einen von einer Krankheit nicht heilen, einen in eine schlechte Wohnung stecken, einen durch Arbeit zu Tode schinden, einen zum Selbstmord treiben, einen in den Krieg führen u.s.w. Nur weniges ist in unserem Staat verboten.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

Anyone can hate. It costs to love.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

While the builders of the cages sleep with bullets, bars and stones, they do not see your road to freedom that you build with flesh and bone. There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish, if they don't care who gets the credit.

Censorship cannot eliminate evil, it can only kill freedom.

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

There is nothing permanent except change.

If you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it.

I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

It is only the sacred things that are woth touching.

This war, like the next war, is a war to end war.

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!

When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.