Alan Perlis Quotes

19: A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

Alan Perlis

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Quotes to Explore

• I am sure that the party system is right and necessary. There must be some scum.

  

  A. P. Herbert
  • Party
  • Right
  • System

• He who improves an opportunity sows a seed which will yield fruit in opportunity for himself and others.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • Opportunity
  • Fruit
  • Seed

• The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA's compliance record.

  

  Barton Gellman
  • Information
  • Public
  • Almost

• Beauty is the promise of happiness.

  

  Edmund Burke
  • Happiness
  • Beauty
  • Promise

• We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.

  

  Naguib Mahfouz
  • Way
  • Change
  • Woman

• Beauty is whatever gives joy.

  

  Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Joy
  • Beauty
  • Whatever

• I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

  

  W. P. Kinsella
  • Pretty
  • Enjoy
  • Doing

• Pay your people the least possible and you'll get from them the same.

  

  Malcolm Forbes
  • People
  • Same
  • Possible

• In Europe we could do it, if we fly as soon as the event is over.

  

  Vince McMahon
  • Fly
  • Europe
  • Event

• I know no man who feels deeper disgust than I do at the ambition, avarice, and profligacy of the priesthood, as well because every one of these vices is odious in itself, as because each of them separately and all of them together are utterly abhorrent in men making profession of a life dedicated to God.

  

  Francesco Guicciardini
  • Life
  • God
  • Men

• In France, I found there is a lot of attention to the little details and to the quality of life.

  

  Yael Naim
  • Life
  • Attention
  • Quality

• If you make a mistake, you should enjoy it.

  

  Adam Ant Adam and the Ants
  • You
  • Mistake
  • Enjoy

• Kids love me. I can bounce back and forth. I can discipline kids, and I can get into the mind of a kid. In my brain, I consider myself the ultimate video game player. The ultimate snack maker.

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Mind
  • Kids
  • Game

• Daft Punk wouldn't have normally fit into anything that was pop on the radio, but they just did it.

  

  Danger Mouse
  • Anything
  • Radio
  • Punk

• What's really important is that all we ever were was a band. And all we ever wanted to be was a band.

  

  Isaac Hanson Hanson
  • Important
  • Band
  • Ever

• As a kid who wasn't into sports, at school I felt almost alienated at times, whereas in the theatre community there was this amazing sense of camaraderie. Early on, we would go to rehearsals with my dad and I was like the mascot for the backstage crew. That was a big part of my childhood, so I dreamed of one day doing a play in London.

  

  Zach Braff
  • School
  • Community
  • Dad

• I understand human needs. I grew up where far too many people lived day to day without elemental needs like food and shelter.

  

  Naveen Jain
  • People
  • Up
  • Food

• To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.

  

  Sam Harris
  • World
  • Peace
  • Religion

• The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin. It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century.

  

  Frederick Forsyth
  • Country
  • Century
  • British

• There's somebody else just like you trying to do it! But you gotta do it faster than they do it!

  

  Eric Thomas
  • Faster
  • Do It

• To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee needs to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.

  

  Jay Samit
  • Art
  • Business
  • Focus

• She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

  

  Virginia Woolf
  • Mind
  • Eye
  • Intense

• I really wanted to find a piano for the farm house. There were so many free pianos on Craigslist, I thought, 'Let's get as many free pianos as we can and stick them all in the barn.' I got eight in a short period of time, only six of which were tunable, but it's still quite funny.

  

  Neko Case
  • Time
  • House
  • Free

• 19: A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

  

  Alan Perlis