“What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming.”

Interview in Hackers — Wizards of the Electronic Age (1985)
1980s
Context: What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming. They wanted to make their programs that they used be as good as they could. They also wanted to make them do neat things. They wanted to be able to do something in a more exciting way than anyone believed possible and show "Look how wonderful this is. I bet you didn't believe this could be done."

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming." by Richard Stallman?
Richard Stallman photo
Richard Stallman 130
American software freedom activist, short story writer and … 1953

Related quotes

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve photo

“To lend freshness to things known, to spread knowledge of things new; an excellent program for a critic.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Renouveler les choses connues, vulgariser les choses neuves: un bon programme pour un critique.
Causeries du lundi, vol. 11 (1856; Paris: Garnier, 1868) p. 512; Philo M. Buck, Jr. Literary Criticism (New York: Harper, 1930) p. 398

Booker T. Washington photo

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor
Albert Einstein photo

“Excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Richard Stallman photo

“My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

How I do my computing (2006) http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
2000s

Doug McIlroy photo

“Word and Excel and PowerPoint and other Microsoft programs have intimate — one might say promiscuous — knowledge of each others' internals. In Unix, one tries to design programs to operate not specifically with each other, but with programs as yet unthought of.”

Doug McIlroy (1932) American computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, and programmer

Doug McIlroy (2003). The Art of Unix Programming: The Elements of Operating-System Style http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch03s01.html

Plutarch photo

“Alexander said, "I assure you I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Alexander
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Alexander the Great photo

“For my part, I assure you, I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

Quoted by Plutarch in Life of Alexander http://books.google.com/books?id=vWIOAAAAYAAJ&q=%22for+my+part+I+assure+you+I+had+rather+excel+others+in+the+knowledge+of+what+is+excellent+than+in+the+extent+of+my+power+and+dominion%22&pg=PA167#v=onepage from Plutarch's Lives as translated by John Dryden (1683)

Chuck Schumer photo

“This is an excellent program. Nobody has said it has done a bad job. It is small. There are only about 50,000 visas a year. … As I ride my bike around New York City on the weekends, I see what immigrants do for America. This program has dramatically helped.”

Chuck Schumer (1950) U.S. Senator from the State of New York

Floor speech in the Senate https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4689088/schumer-visa-program (24 May 2006) celebrating the diversity visa program, as reported and quoted in "Schumer on Diversity Visa: 'This is an Excellent Program'" http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/01/schumer-champions-diversity-visa-excellent-program/ by Neil Munro, Breitbart.com (1 November 2017)

Sun Tzu photo

“To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army

Jeff Sessions photo

“I love that program (asset forfeiture). We had so much fun doing that, taking drug dealers' money and passing it out to people trying to put drug dealers in jail. What's wrong with that?”

Jeff Sessions (1946) Former United States Attorney General

Sessions welcomes restoration of asset forfeiture: "I love that program" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sessions-welcomes-expansion-of-asset-forfeiture-i-love-that-program/, September 1 2017

Related topics