Favourite Quotes

Using other peoples words is a bit lazy. However, what people say can be insightful, funny, or stupid, and make you think a bit differently about a topic. Here are a few quotes that I've liked over the years.

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success. - Dennis Ritchie

Hello, I'm Johnnycab. Where can I take you tonight? - Johnnycab, Total Recall (Film, 1990)

I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me. - Albert Einstein

I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git. - Linus Torvalds

Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there's only one of me. - Linus Torvalds

One of the biggest risks for autonomous vehicles is somebody achieving a fleet wide hack. - Elon Musk

Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don’t know. - Bertrand Russell

Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been. - Albert Einstein

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

...there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know, there are known unknowns, that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know. - Donald Rumsfeld

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. - C. A. R. Hoare

They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. - Nathaniel Lee

We hope you enjoyed the ride! - Johnnycab, Total Recall (Film, 1990)

What do you want meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning. Desire is the theme of all life! - Charlie Chaplin as Calvero in Limelight (Film, 1952)

When in doubt, use brute force. - Ken Thompson

I always said there was something fundamentally wrong about the universe! - Arthur Dent in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke's Third Law

No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto. - Bartholomew Roberts, Black Bart was an 18th Century Welsh pirate

Security is a process, not a product. - Bruce Schneier

The ultimate in sophistication is simplicity. - Leonard Thiessen

Alternatively, at the same reference - The height of sophistication is simplicity. - Clare Boothe Luce

Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple. - Jack Kerouac

See Also

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