“I dunno. Perhaps you should be happy that I have a policy of refraining from grumbling about handicapped operating systems.”

“I should have been happy—I was being paid to be here—but happiness does not respond to that kind of imperative; it is no good telling yourself you should be happy.”

“To kind of explain what Linux is, you have to explain what an operating system is. And the thing about an operating system is that you're never ever supposed to see it. Because nobody really uses an operating system; people use programs on their computer. And the only mission in life of an operating system is to help those programs run. So an operating system never does anything on its own; it's only waiting for the programs to ask for certain resources, or ask for a certain file on the disk, or ask to connect to the outside world. And then the operating system steps in and tries to make it easy for people to write programs.”

“Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system. Empires have no need for a balance of power. That is how the United States has conducted its foreign policy in the Americas, and China through most of its history in Asia.”

“The refraining of freedom of speech from the governmental system can cause its citizens to turn into narcissists in their free time.”

“I have come to operate on you.”

“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently… Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”

“Well, if I can't be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.”

“About happiness he said not a word, I suppose because he considered it something strictly private and perhaps, how shall I say, treacherous or elusive.”

“I have a philosophy, you do the best you can, and the things you can’t do anything about, don’t give any thought to them. … I feel I have to make a contribution. When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating. Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine.”