Jerry Pournelle Quotes (10 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Lucifer's Hammer

Jerry Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle: 10 quotes 0 likes

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Famous Jerry Pournelle Quotes

“One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee.”

Jerry Pournelle

How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANET http://www.stormtiger.org/bob/humor/pournell/story.html from message published on BIX networks/arpanet #3, from jerryp, Tue Jul 9 18:22:01 1985.
Assorted

“Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.”

Jerry Pournelle

Reference quote http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view408.html#Iron in Chaos Manor View 408, April 3-9, 2006
Assorted

“I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location.”

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor, Byte magazine, October 1990, page 84.
Assorted

“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. (Note: This quote, although found in the 1985 sci-fi novel, 'Lucifer's Hammer', by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, may be erroneously attributed to Pournelle. As this quote can also be found in the Preface of Henri Poincare's "Science and Hypothesis" the 1952 Dover abridged edition)”

Jerry Pournelle book Lucifer's Hammer

Lucifer's Hammer (1985)

“One of the first things they teach stockbrokers is to stay out of the stock market. Brokers make their pile from selling advice, and from commissions on stock transactions. They can't predict the market, and few risk their own money. They, at least, only affect their clients' fortunes. Economists, though, can ruin the lot of us with their advice — yet if no science can predict a relatively closed system like the stock market, how the devil are you going to 'fine tune' something a large as the American economy? I'd think it arrogant to try; as arrogant as the man with three illiterate drug-addicted spoiled brats writing a book on parenting.”

Jerry Pournelle

"The Voodoo Sciences" http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/voodoo.html, 1988
Assorted

“In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.”

Jerry Pournelle book Lucifer's Hammer

Lucifer's Hammer (1985)