“To our dismay, users who had been enduring several hour waits between jobs run under batch processing were suddenly restless when response times were more than a second.”
Source: On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991), p. 77
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Fernando J. Corbató 11
American computer scientist 1926–2019Related quotes
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 11

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 376.

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: Much of the debate in Washington has put forward a false choice when it comes to Libya. On the one hand, some question why America should intervene at all — even in limited ways — in this distant land. They argue that there are many places in the world where innocent civilians face brutal violence at the hands of their government, and America should not be expected to police the world, particularly when we have so many pressing needs here at home.
It’s true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs. And given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action. But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right. In this particular country — Libya — at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground.
To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Speech to Conservative Women's Conference (24 May 1978) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103696.
Leader of the Opposition
Context: Perhaps [the] most important reason for the fall in standards and increase in crime—the attack on traditional values. It is not surprising that sometimes parents have been confused about the endless advice and the many rival theories on how to bring up children. There were times when I had to remind myself that our parents and grandparents brought us up without trendy theories and they didn't make such a bad job of it. So it would seem that the tried and trusted values and commonsense application would lead to far better results than we are now experiencing. We must teach that each of us is a responsible person who can choose his own course of action and who has a duty to others to do as he would be done by. That morality is largely based on religious values. Cut the stem and the plant withers. That is why we have been so keen to keep religious teaching in our schools. To those who say that is indoctrinating children, I would reply—it is no such thing. It is a practical recognition of the truth that while an adult may, if he wishes, reject the faith in which he has been brought up, a child will find it difficult to acquire any faith at all without some instruction in the discipline of belief and practice.

On her father’s military experiences in “Suzan-Lori Parks: 'People in America are often encouraged not to think'” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/21/suzan-lori-parks-interview-royal-court-father-comes-home-from-the-wars-obama in The Guardian (2016 Sep 21)