Alan Perlis Quotes
42: You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Quotes to Explore
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I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject.
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My mom says that when I was a little kid, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I don't remember that.
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Sometimes I don't know whether a movie has been shot on film or in digital when I watch it in the theatres.
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What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
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The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.
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People don't believe in me very much, but I have my teammates and my family that believe in me so much; they see how hard I work.
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Diversity isn't just a hallmark of big cities anymore.
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You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.
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I always feel I had a very lucky life. For example, I sure didn't want to go in the army: when I was drafted in the Korean War, I wanted to go as a photographer. But luckily, they put me in the infantry - luckily because the official photographer was photographing the medal awarding and all the official situations.
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If I'm elected president, we will repeal every word of Obamacare.
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I'm my own hero on the sets; why should I work with other heroes? The Khans did not want to work with me when I started. Why should I work with them now?
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The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.
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It's always good to be known. You want to build your brand up, want to build your name.
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I'm aware that given what I've done in the past - and having a well-known parent - that people will be very quick to judge my path more than others, but I have to just not care.
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Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.
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I think the art fair is very much a form of urbanism. I think something really happens to the cities when such a fair happens. The city becomes an exhibition; it's amazing.
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When I was a kid, there was so much talent outside of recorded music.
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You say something, things you would rather forget, and then they are out there. It makes me anxious and I don't know why people are interested in me anyway. If I had my way, I would rather exist in a little hole and not speak to anyone.
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My dad would take me deer hunting with him, which was pretty traumatic - 'Bambi' was one of my favorite movies.
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Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".
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I tend to find you have to be fairly vulnerable to get something... to get a perspective worth having. Which can be controversial. But I find telling someone what you're thinking about, what you want, and what you're afraid of can often help them give guidance.
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There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content.
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The visceral experience of seeing a movie in three dimensions, coming at you in the theater, is obviously here to stay, because it is a unique experience. I think that kind of format is only appropriate for some genres, but I'm all for it.
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42: You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
