All Quotes

"In total desperation, I called over to the engineering building, and I said, "Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me.""

"At the end of about a week, I called back and said, "I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?""

"I've received many honors and I'm grateful for them; but I've already received the highest award I'll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy."

"[The Computer] was the first machine man built that assisted the power of his brain instead of the strength of his arm."

"They're going right to building them bigger and bigger and faster and faster. They'd do much better to build a system of computers and have them operate in parallel. We'd get much more done, faster. (…) My analogy is that back in the early days of this country, when they moved heavy objects around, they didn't have any Caterpillar tractors and they didn't have any big cranes. They used oxen. And when they got a great, big log on the ground and one ox couldn't move it, they didn't try to grow a bigger ox. They used two oxen."

"It's just like planning a dinner. You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so it's ready when you need it. Programming requires patience and the ability to handle detail. Women are 'naturals' at computer programming."

"Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems."

"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise."

"We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question."

"You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington."

"The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."

"The most dangerous phrase in the language is 'We've always done it this way!'"."

"Unsourced: One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions."

"A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things."

"If in doubt – do it."

"This saying has been in print already 1957, in Gerald Kershs "Fowler's End", p. 23."

"To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge."

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

"But Grace, then anyone will be able to write programs!"

"Admiral Hopper, ... is the first woman to receive America's highest technology award as an individual. The award recognizes her as a computer pioneer, who spent a half century helping keep America on the leading edge of high technology."

"I believe that we should take every opportunity to challenge the assumption that our European allies are doing us a favor whenever they provide us with the necessary facilities from which to defend their own continent."

"Government is too big and important to be left to the politicians."

"And why should we, of all people, expect the proud new developing nations to see the world precisely as we see it? Was any new nation ever more outspoken, independent and unaligned than the young America of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln?"

"To some extent we are all the prisoners of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely."

"There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman."

"I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation."

"One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines."

"Everything is only a dream."

"Paris flared — Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice."

"She would have cursed the Almighty had she been able to shout out a blasphemy. Providence had deceived her for over sixty years, by treating her as a gentle, good little girl, by amusing her with lying representations of tranquil joy. And she had remained a child, senselessly believing in a thousand silly things, and unable to see life as it really is, dragging along in the sanguinary filth of passions. Providence was bad; it should have told her the truth before, or have allowed her to continue in her innocence and blindness. Now, it only remained for her to die, denying love, denying friendship, denying devotedness. Nothing existed but murder and lust."

"Au fond une pensée unique les rongeait: ils s’irritaient contre leur crime, ils se désespéraient d’avoir à jamais troublé leur vie."

"Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it! I stake my life on it — my honor! At this solemn moment, in the presence of this tribunal which is the representative of human justice, before you, gentlemen of the jury, who are the very incarnation of the country, before the whole of France, before the whole world, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By my forty years of work, by the authority that this toil may have given me, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By all I have now, by the name I have made for myself, by my works which have helped for the expansion of French literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. May all that melt away, may my works perish if Dreyfus be not innocent! He is innocent. All seems against me — the two Chambers, the civil authority, the military authority, the most widely-circulated journals, the public opinion which they have poisoned. And I have for me only an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite calm; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country should not remain the victim of lies and injustice. I may be condemned here. The day will come when France will thank me for having helped to save her honor."

"If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way."

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud!"

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."

"A writer of great talent, to whom I complained of the little sympathy I have met with, made me this profound answer: "You have an immense fault which will close all doors against you: you cannot converse for two minutes with a fool without showing him that he is one.""

"The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the ones that retail nightly the tittle-tattle from alcoves and private rooms, held their noses and talked of filth and stench. I am not complaining about this reception; on the contrary I am delighted to observe that my colleagues have such maidenly susceptibilities."

"Thérèse, residing in damp obscurity, in gloomy, crushing silence, saw life expand before her in all its nakedness, each night bringing the same cold couch, and each morn the same empty day."

"Thérèse could not find one human being, not one living being among these grotesque and sinister creatures, with whom she was shut up; sometimes she had hallucinations, she imagined herself buried at the bottom of a tomb, in company with mechanical corpses, who, when the strings were pulled, moved their heads, and agitated their legs and arms."

"The only ambition of this great powerful frame was to do nothing, to grovel in idleness and satiation from hour to hour. He wanted to eat well, sleep well, to abundantly satisfy his passions, without moving from his place, without running the risk of the slightest fatigue."

"She made a savage, angry effort at revolt, and, then all at once gave in. They exchanged not a word. The act was silent and brutal."

"They have stifled me with their middle-class gentleness, and I can hardly understand how it is that there is still blood in my veins. I have lowered my eyes, and given myself a mournful, idiotic face like theirs. I have led their deathlike life."

"The young woman seemed to take pleasure in being bold and shameless. She had no hesitation, no fear whatsoever. She threw herself into adultery with a sort of vigorous sincerity, defying danger and doing so with a sort of vanity in her defiance."

"Elle aimait ce garçon de cette tendresse bavarde que les vieilles femmes ont pour les gens qui viennent de leur pays, apportant avec eux des souvenirs du passé."

"La nature et les circonstances semblaient avoir fait cette femme pour cet homme, et les avoir poussés l'un vers l'autre."

"C'était comme un éclair de passion, rapide et aveuglant, dans un ciel mort."

"Il a besoin de cette femme pour vivre comme on a besoin de boire et de manger."

"L'idée de la mort, jetée avec désespoir entre deux baisers, revenait implacable et aiguë."

"Parfois, ils se forçaient à l’espérance, ils cherchaient à reprendre les rêves brûlants d’autrefois, et ils demeuraient tout étonnés, en voyant que leur imagination était vide."

"When they seated themselves in their carriage, they seemed to be greater strangers than before."