“In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior.”

— Jon Postel

RFC 791 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0791.txt, Internet Protocol (September 1981)
Often shortened to Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

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

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Jon Postel 7

American computer scientist 1943–1998

Jay Wright Forrester (1918–2016) American operations researcher

Source: Principles of Systems (1968), p. 4-1 as cited in: Richardson, George P. " Reflections on the foundations of system dynamics http://obssr.od.nih.gov/issh/2012/files/Richardson%202011.pdf." System Dynamics Review 27.3 (2011): 219-243.

“TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”

Jon Postel RFC 793: Transmission Control Protocol

The "Robustness Principle", RFC 793 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0793.txt, Transmission Control Protocol, entire text of section 2.10 (September 1981).

“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 55.

“The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence “law”; that of the individual, “crime.””

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
As quoted in The Great Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 664
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

“Typically, a subclass augments or redefines the existing structure and behavior of its superclasses.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 56

“Artificial Life is concerned with tuning the behaviors of such low-level machines that the behavior that emerges at the global level is essentially the same as some behavior exhibited by a natural living system… Artificial Life is concerned with generating lifelike behavior.”

Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist

Source: Artificial Life (1989), p.4-5 as cited in: Luis M. Rocha (2012) " The logical mechanisms of life http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/i-bic/lec02.html" on indiana.edu, August 27, 2012

“Opposed to atomism and behaviorism, the systems view of man links him again with the world he lives in, for he is seen as emerging in that world and reflecting its general character.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 79.

“A system is a set of things – people, cells, molecules, or whatever – interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. […] The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior!”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Page 2.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008)

“Since institutional economics is behavioristic, and the behavior in question is none other than the behavior of individuals while participating in transactions, institutional economics must make an analysis of the economic behavior of individuals.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: "Institutional Economics," 1931, p. 654

“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

Robert Conquest (1917–2015) poet and historian from England and the United States

“In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior.”

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