I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up.

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.

Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.

C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

... with proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.

Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX.

If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?

We're not a band because we're trying to be the Mother Teresas of the music industry, out to serve everybody. We're a band first and foremost because we love playing pop music.

There are a lot of doubts over the size and effect of new competitors in the cellular sector.

Drink up, England... I WANT your liver to fail. Smoke up England, I WANT you to die.

It is well to be off with the old woman before you're on with the new.

Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.

Progress on problems is the measure of leadership; leaders mobilize people to face problems, and communities make progress on problems because leaders challenge them and help them to do so.

I've never had a day job. I've been very fortunate

Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it - his mind, his body, his heart - what's life worth to him?

It is so much easier to tell intimate things in the dark.