Alan Perlis Quotes

People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift.

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.

Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.

You cannot fashion a wit out of two half-wits.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Genius is initiative on fire.

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.

My success was not based so much on any great intelligence but on great common sense.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Smarter is always the answer.

Geniuses always think it's easier than we make it out to be.

People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

There never yet has been a country which became powerful without knowledge. A man by his own strength alone cannot successfully combat a tiger, but by his intelligence, he can devise means to entrap him.

I always know how to play this game. It's about being smart.

There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.

Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?

Destroying something, any idiot can do. Creating needs intelligence.

Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.