Each place has its own advantages - heaven for the climate, and hell for the society.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

There is no left or right. There's only an up or down. Up to the ultimate in individual freedom, man's age old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society -- or down to the totalitarianism of the ant heap. And those today who, however good their intentions, tell us that we should trade freedom for security are on that downward path.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Structural Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse, so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.

The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

You can lead a man to congress, but you can't make him think.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

A witty saying proves nothing.

... if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent"

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.

If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitiable.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

From a long view of the history of mankind - seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

The current practice of compiling subscript range checks into the machine code while a program is being tested, then suppressing the checks during production runs, is like a sailor who wears his life preserver while training on land but leaves it behind when he sails!

Maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill, and these are our beans!

Life is short and ROM is full.

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which grant[s] a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

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

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.

The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Did you ever eat that cotton candy they sell at fairs? Well, philosophy is like that--it looks as if it were really something, and it's awfully pretty, and it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it you can't get your teeth into it, and when you try to swallow, there isn't anything there.

Programming today is the opposite of diamond mining. In diamond mining you dig up a lot of dirt to find a small bit of value. With programming you start with the value, the real intention, and bury it in a bunch of dirt.

I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

"A well-crafted pepperoni pizza, being necessary to the preservation of a diverse menu, the right of the people to keep and cook tomatoes, shall not be infringed." I would ask you to try to argue that this statement says that only pepperoni pizzas can keep and cook tomatoes, and only well-crafted ones at that. This is basically what the so-called states rights people argue with respect to the well-regulated militia, vs. the right to keep and bear arms.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh oooh ooh, the sky is the limit!

When the government no longer trusts the people, it should dissolve them and elect a new people.

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

You [should] not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying.

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.

One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the War on Terror.

If we guard our toothbrushes and diamonds with equal zeal, we will lose fewer toothbrushes and more diamonds.

Speaking just for me, I don't think I have Linux blinders on my eyes. I can see other platforms, but I *choose* to ignore them on the theory that if I ignore them hard enough they will go away.

This theory is obviously crazy. However, it also appears to be working.

Living in today's complex world of the future is like having bees living in your head. But there they are.

I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this," well that would be enough immortality for me.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I think that, for babies, every day is first love in Paris. Every wobbly step is skydiving, every game of hide and seek is Einstein in 1905.

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

There is no extra magic inside the FPGA, just the usual magic.

I hate quotations.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

You know, I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later.

Alas, our kitten-class attack ships were no match for their mighty chairs. The universe is doomed! Doomed!

Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.