I have long since given up dealing with people who hold idiotic opinions as if they had arrived at them through thinking about them.

It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.

Norway did not even have a revolution at the time the rest of Europe was busy figuring out human rights and stuff, because we were busy fighting over how to spell it.

We have no mom-and-pop oil rigs in Norway.

Part of any serious QA is removing Perl code the same way you go over a dilapidated building you inherit to remove chewing gum and duct tape and fix whatever was kept together for real.

it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust anybody, and in CLOS you basically trust everybody. The practical result is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS.

I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it'll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.

That's why the smartest companies use Common Lisp, but lie about it so all their competitors think Lisp is slow and C++ is fast.

Life is hard, and then you die.

Well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can't easily express complex problems in C, so you don't.

Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.

The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.

What isn’t clear, isn’t French.

Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.

She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again.

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

Listening is more important than talking. Just hit your mark and believe what you say. Just listen to people and react to what they are saying.

After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.

I think male roles are generally much better written. So for actresses, we're always dealing with trying to inject a role with more truth than the writer possibly had in mind.

It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends.

The rock sitting on the shelf has potential because it can fall - it's the same way with the Internet. It has this potential. It's not really doing it yet, but it's about to.