I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design.

Smart people underestimate the ordinarity of ordinary people.

I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language.

Man is driven to create; I know I really love to create things. And while I'm not good at painting, drawing, or music, I can write software.

Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines.

It is not the responsibility of the language to force good looking code, but the language should make good looking code possible.

Plant a memory, plant a tree, do it today for tomorrow.

The orthogonal features, when combined, can explode into complexity.

From the viewpoint of what you can do, therefore, languages do differ - but the differences are limited. For example, Python and Ruby provide almost the same power to the programmer.

Society has parted man from man, neglectful of the universal heart.

The dead, Your Honor, do not agonize over their crimes and do not long to be happy, as you know.

When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

I'm like a decathlete without the body.

Spring and fall, those are very inspiring times of the year for me.

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

It's hard to keep your balance standing tip-toe.

An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.