Rob Pike Quotes

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

Words are a commodity in which there is never any slump.

I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

Languages that try to disallow idiocy become themselves idiotic.

Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it.

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.

Language should fulfill your individual existence as a wholesome human being... Language should be more than just getting by.

A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.

Only the rational and useful is beautiful.

The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things.

The usefulest truths are the plainest.

Language was invented because of the deep human need to complain.

A 'truth' detached and purified of pleasures of ordinary life is not worth a damn in my view. Every grand theory and noble sentiment ought to be first tested in the kitchen-and then in bed, of course.

Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly.

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.

If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.

Language was invented to ask questions.

Abstract knowledge is always useful, sooner or later.

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.

Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)

I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives

But that which is useful is the better.

The useful may be trusted to further itself, for many produce it and no one can do without it; but the beautiful must be specially encouraged, for few can present it, while yet all have need of it.