Philip Greenspun Quotes

I think I always stand up for what I believe in.

I am the unhappiest WordPress user in the world, I think it sucks.

For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.

Stop and think a little: Are you the victim of the system?

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.

It is certainly true that principles cannot be more securely founded than on experience and consciously clear thinking.

True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.

If the popular thing to do is to say you have to ban flag burning, even if it ultimately means we're compromising a core principle of who we are as a republic, I don't think Donald Trump really thinks that that deeply into it.

I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.

Don’t just follow the trend. You may have heard me say that it’s good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles. Which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

Jolt is for Windows programmers. It's typical IBM PC: it goes in brown and comes out yellow. Mountain Dew is for Macintosh programmers: it goes in yellow and comes out yellow. It's WYSIWYP.

I think our system is being polluted by money.

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.

I change my opinions often, but not my way of thinking.

I think we would have made a lot more mistakes and would have accomplished a lot less had we not been grounded in some basic truths.

The 80/20 Principle, like the truth, can make you free. You can work less. At the same time, you can earn more and enjoy more. The only price is that you need to do some serious 80/20 thinking.

I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it...The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

I think that the United States has always been most effective when it is leading both from power and principle.

I think the narcissism comes from the industry side of things. The artistic side of a person is never narcissist; it's always empathic, it's always kind and compassionate. It can be difficult to hold onto artistic principles when the business is so glaringly about the product. It's sad.

Gobbledygook may indicate a failure to think clearly, a contempt for one's clients, or more probably a mixture of both. A system that can't or won't communicate is not a safe basis for a democracy.

I'm saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems.

Under the principle of equality, we should get as close to respecting equal votes of every citizen as we can, given our constitutional structure. And I think if we did that, then the will of the people would not be overturned.

In my mind of course natural disaster like tsunami, and these things, also I think indirectly may relate to human behavior. But then major sort of problems actually they're due to a lack of moral principle.