Quotes about program
page 3

Christopher Hitchens photo

“In what people irritatingly call "iconic" terms, Bin Laden certainly had no rival. The strange, scrofulous quasi-nobility and bogus spirituality of his appearance was appallingly telegenic, and it will be highly interesting to see whether this charisma survives the alternative definition of revolution that has lately transfigured the Muslim world. The most tenaciously lasting impression of all, however, is that of his sheer irrationality. What had the man thought he was doing? Ten years ago, did he expect, let alone desire, to be in a walled compound in dear little Abbottabad?…Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states…. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day…It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust. Well, he and his fellow psychopaths did succeed in killing thousands in North America and Western Europe, but in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2011-05-02
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/death_of_a_madman.html
Death of a Madman
Slate
1091-2339
2010s, 2011

Barrett Brown photo

“The truth is that I am a sentient computer program and I fully intend to burn your cities to the ground.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

True/Slant, "Farewell, and a confession" http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/07/29/farewell-and-a-confession/, 29 July 2010.

Alan Kay photo
Verghese Kurien photo
Oscar Levant photo
Jack Valenti photo

“We want to tell American parents that they and they alone have total power to control every hour of television programming that comes into their home.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

As quoted in "US TV industry plans June ad campaign on decency" Reuters news agency (24 April 2006) http://www.entertainment-news.org/breaking/50538/us-tv-industry-plans-june-ad-campaign-on-decency.html

Ward Cunningham photo

“I wanted to be a novelist and a newspaper man… I went to Antioch College and majored in English, at least in the beginning, with the intention of doing something like that…. Antioch had a co-op program so I went to work for the New York Post as a copyboy when I decided I didn't want to be a newspaper man; it was fun, but it wasn't practical. After a while I shifted into philosophy as a major, but I never had any undergraduate training at all in anthropology and, indeed, very little social science outside of economics. I had a lot of economics but nothing else. Anthropology wasn't even taught at Antioch then, although it is now. And except for a political science course or two and lots of economics, I didn't have any social sciences. So I was in literature for at least half the time I was there, the first couple of years, and then I shifted to philosophy, partly because of the influence of a terrific teacher and partly because in a small college you can run out of courses. 'Men I got interested in the same sort of thing I'm interested in now: values, ideas, and so on. Finally, one of my professors said, "Why don't you think about anthropology?"”

Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) American anthropologist

That was the first time I had thought seriously about being an anthropologist, and then I began to think about it and I went to Harvard and so on.
"Clifford Geertz on Ethnography and Social Construction", 1991

“The newspaper fits the reader’s program while the listener must fit the broadcaster’s program.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

The Enduring American Press (October 1964) edited by The Hartford Courant

“To the average mathematician who merely wants to know that his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a formal game and one is only concerned with the question of consistency.”

Paul Cohen (1934–2007) American mathematician

p. 11 of "Comments on the foundations of set theory." https://books.google.com/books?id=TVi2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 In Axiomatic set theory, pp. 9-15. Providence (RI). American Mathematical Society, 1971.

Kenneth E. Iverson photo
George W. Bush photo
Neil Gorsuch photo
Niklaus Wirth photo
Joe Barton photo
John Lehman photo
Michael Vassar photo

“I taught at a school in Cincinnati with a 0% graduation rate and that was also interesting so I updated from thinking school was beneficial for other people but not beneficial to me, to thinking school was beneficial for maybe some people around the middle – at least some of the better schools – but not beneficial for the vast majority of people, to then actually reading the literature on education and on intelligence and academic accomplishment and symbolic manipulation and concluding "no, school isn't good for anyone". There might be a few schools that are good for people, like there's Blair and there's Stuyvesant and these schools may actually teach people, but school can better be seen as a vaccination program against knowledge than a process for instilling knowledge in people, and of course when a vaccination program messes up, occasionally people get sick and die of the mumps or smallpox or whatever. And when school messes up occasionally people get sick and educated and they lose biological fitness. And in either case the people in charge revise the program and try to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the case of school they also use that as part of their positive branding and you know maintain a not-very-plausible story about it being intended to cause that effect while also working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Michael Vassar (1979) President of the Singularity Institute

In an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cSG0p-uflA with Adam Ford, December 2012

Robert A. Dahl photo

“In a magic show, mystification is a good thing, but it is hardly to be commended in an economic program.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 4 : From Principles to Problems

Coretta Scott King photo

“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As quoted in New Woman, Vol. 16, No. 4 (April 1986), p. 20

Amir Taheri photo

“Most of the network related programming in games has to do with providing a good interactive experience when playing over the internet. This matter is very different from serving web pages. The primary concern there is to handle connection latency, latency fluctuations, packet loss and bandwidth limitations, and pretty much hide all of that from the player's experience.”

Timothee Besset French software programmer

Quoted in Brian Boyko, "ID Software Developer Timothee Besset on Network Performance in Games" http://www.networkperformancedaily.com/2007/01/id_software_developer_timothee.html Network Performance Daily (2007-01-29).

Ilana Mercer photo

“If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Weinberg attributed with the quote in: Murali Chemuturi (2010) Mastering Software Quality Assurance: Best Practices, Tools and Technique for Software Developers. p. ix

Camille Paglia photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

On National Socialism and World Relations http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler1.htm, speech in the German Reichstag (January 30, 1937). German translation published by H. Müller & Sohn in Berlin.
1930s

John D. Carmack photo
Milton Friedman photo
Jack Osbourne photo
Larry Wall photo

“Perl programming is an *empirical* science!”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[10226@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Frank Gehry photo
Steven M. Greer photo
A. Wayne Wymore photo
Jean-Pierre Serre photo

“You see, some mathematicians have clear and far-ranging. "programs". For instance, Grothendieck had such a program for algebraic geometry; now Langlands has one for representation theory, in relation to modular forms and arithmetic. I never had such a program, not even a small size one.”

Jean-Pierre Serre (1926) French mathematician

An Interview with Jean-Pierre Serre - Singapore Mathematical Society https://sms.math.nus.edu.sg/smsmedley/Vol-13-1/An%20interview%20with%20Jean-Pierre%20Serre(CT%20Chong%20&%20YK%20Leong).pdf

Benito Mussolini photo

“Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Mussolini's March 23, 1919 speech to announce the first Fasci di Combattimento (League of Combat). Published in Fascism, Anti-Fascism and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present, Stanislao G. Pugliese, Lanham: Maryland, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (2004) p. 43
1910s

Gleb Pavlovsky photo

“Power in Russia today is the power that's established, mounted. It arises anew and it's authoritarian in its technology, but not in its program. It doesn't know which one it wants to be and can be — this depends on its future programming by people, i. e. you.”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

"Сегодня власть в России — власть устанавливаемая, учредительная власть. Она возникает заново и авторитарна по технологии, но не по своей программе. Она еще не знает, какой хочет и может быть, — это зависит от будущего ее программирования людьми, то есть вами."

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Don Tapscott photo
Earl Blumenauer photo

“One of the most important things the United States did in the aftermath of World War II was to help returning veterans with housing. In 1945, in my home state of Oregon, we established the Veterans Home Loan Program, which for over 60 years has provided more than 300,000 loans. This has changed the lives of Oregon veterans and revitalized communities.”

Earl Blumenauer (1948) American politician

Earl Blumenauer (December 18, 2007), " House Restores Oregon Veterans Provisions Cut by Senate http://blumenauer.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=323". Press Release. Congressman Earl Blumenauer's Website, Representing the 3rd Congressional District of Oregon. United States House of Representatives.

Dennis M. Ritchie photo
Italo Calvino photo
Francis Escudero photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Jack Benny photo

“Bob: Welcome to the Lucky Strike Program. In just a few minutes, you'll see our star, Gypsy Rose Benny.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

Donald A. Norman photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“There's no doubt that we have other problems with Iran. But personally, I'd rather deal with the other problems having put that lid on their nuclear program than still to be facing that.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Phillip Guston photo
Mark Rothko photo
Mark Pilgrim photo

“Programming with libxml2 is like the thrilling embrace of an exotic stranger.”

Mark Pilgrim (1972) American computer programmer

Dive Into Mark http://web.archive.org/web/20110902041836/http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/18/libxml2, Wednesday, February 18, 2004.

Ron Paul photo
Will Eisner photo
Jose Peralta photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Angela Davis photo
David Woodard photo
Andrew Vachss photo
Glenn Beck photo
Jürgen Klinsmann photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Regina E. Dugan photo

“The DARPA model has three elements:
Ambitious goals. The agency’s projects are designed to harness science and engineering advances to solve real-world problems or create new opportunities. At Defense, GPS was an example of the former and stealth technology of the latter. The problems must be sufficiently challenging that they cannot be solved without pushing or catalyzing the science. The presence of an urgent need for an application creates focus and inspires greater genius.
Temporary project teams. DARPA brings together world-class experts from industry and academia to work on projects of relatively short duration. Team members are organized and led by fixed-term technical managers, who themselves are accomplished in their fields and possess exceptional leadership skills. These projects are not open-ended research programs. Their intensity, sharp focus, and finite time frame make them attractive to the highest-caliber talent, and the nature of the challenge inspires unusual levels of collaboration. In other words, the projects get great people to tackle great problems with other great people.
Independence. By charter, DARPA has autonomy in selecting and running projects. Such independence allows the organization to move fast and take bold risks and helps it persuade the best and brightest to join.”

Regina E. Dugan (1963) American businesswoman, inventor, and technology developer

“Special Forces” Innovation: How DARPA Attacks Problems (2013)

Francis Escudero photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Your problem has nothing to do with git, and everything to do with emacs. And then you have the gall to talk about "Unix design" and not gumming programs together, when you yourself use the most gummed-up piece of absolute sh*t there is!”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message, Git mailing list, 2008-12-17, Gmane, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-12-18 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/103400,
2000s, 2008

Michael Friendly photo

“Many schools are now introducing computers into the educational curriculum. Within 10 years it is predicted that computers will play a significant role in every classroom in North America. The question is, how will they be used? Many educators have been focusing on the use of computers for drill and programmed instruction—to provide individualized practice and instruction in the usual curriculum areas. There is another use for computers in education which some educators, myself included, find more exciting. These involve using the computer:
• to provide an environment in which learning can be intrinsically motivating and fun.
• to allow children to discover, explore and create knowledge.
• to help develop skills of thinking and problem solving.
• to make some of the most powerful ideas of the burgeoning computer culture accessible and tangible to children at an early age.
If you have ever watched a child playing good video games or if you play them yourself, then you know the powerful motivation that graphics displays can create. As I’ve watched children play these games, every bit of their attention focused on the screen, I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to harness this motivation and channel it toward intellectual growth and learning…”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. Advanced Logo: A Language for Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1988. Preface

Neil Armstrong photo
Frank Stella photo

“I don't know how I got into sculpture. I liked its physicality, that's the only reason. I didn't have a program.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quote: Stella's response to the question: Is that one of the reasons you went into sculpture?
Source: Quotes, 1971 - 2000, Bomb: X Motion Picture and Center for New Art Activities, 2000, p. 28,

Noam Chomsky photo
Ed Bradley photo

“Known best for his investigative reports on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, Ed Bradley won 19 Emmy Awards throughout his journalism career, including one for lifetime achievement in 2003.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congressman Steve LaTourette, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Bill Gates photo

“The three most important things to look for when searching for a church home are doctrine, doctrine, and doctrine. If your main criteria are 'programs' and 'outreach' to this or that niche group, then in my opinion you are starting your search the wrong way.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

The Memsahib’s Quote of the Day https://survivalblog.com/the_memsahibs_quote_of_the_day_1/, Survivalblog, 5 May 2006

“Programming is like pinball. The reward for doing it well is the opportunity to do it again.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Compiled (1989)

Richard Stallman photo
Martin Rushent photo

“When Hitler was fighting for power, he published a program of his Nazi Party. There, in the article 24, it was declared: "We are all for ‘positive Christianity’." Many genuine Christians got hooked for it. But when Hitler finally had acquired the full power in the country, it was suddenly disclosed what many had overlooked: The Positive Christianity was just disguised Nazism. At the same time, the fight against the Bible triggered its ramp. Especially the Old Testament was taken under the heavy attack. Everywhere you could hear and read: Well, the New Testament can be allowed to circulate for some time, because the teaching there in is about the God of love. Just one thing, the letters of Jew Paul must be eliminated from there, they smack too much of the Spirit of the Old Testament. As for the Old Testament itself - oh, that’s a terrible book, a dirty book, a horrifying book! There in, a voice of the Judeo-Syrian God of desert and revenge can be heard!”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Testimony By Verdun, p. 100
Wilhelm Busch erzählt: Als Hitler um die Macht kämpfte, veröffentlichte er ein Parteiprogramm. In dem stand als Punkt 24: “Wir sind für positives Christentum.” Viele treue Christen sind darauf hereingefallen. Als aber Hitler an der Macht war, erfuhr man, was viele vorausgesehen hatten: Positives Christentum ist dasselbe wie Nationalsozialismus. Zu gleicher Zeit begann der Kampf gegen die Bibel. Namentlich das Alte Testament wurde unter Trommelfeuer genommen. Überall konnte man hören und lesen: Nun ja, das Neue Testament könne man noch einige Zeit gelten lassen; denn da werde der Gott der Liebe gelehrt. Nur die Briefe des Juden Paulus müsse man ausmerzen. In denen sei der Geist des Alten Testaments zu spüren. Das Alte Testament aber – oh, das sei ein fürchterliches Buch, ein schmutziges Buch, ein grauenvolles Buch! Da rede der jüdisch-syrische Wüsten-Rache-Gott. (German)
Testimony By Verdun

Ben Klassen photo
Richard Stallman photo
Ward Cunningham photo

“There is an art to knowing where things should be checked and making sure that the program fails fast if you make a mistake. That kind of choosing is part of the art of simplification.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

John Backus photo

“Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.”

John Backus (1924–2007) American computer scientist

Quoted in the IBM employee magazine Think in 1979. Cited by his Associated Press obituary http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17704662/

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

Amir Taheri photo

“So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms. A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior. The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing. They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination. A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions. Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything. “Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul. No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter. The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community. How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison? The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction. The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity. Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis. Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts… Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities… Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole. They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them). To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity" http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/beyond-terrorism-isis-and-other-enemies-of-humanity/, New York Post (August 20, 2014).
New York Post

Oswald Pohl photo
Buddy Carter photo

“What we are trying to do is change the statute, so they can use private contractors. You would expect on my side of the aisle they are very much in favor of it. I think all of them recognize the Illinois case that saved taxpayers money and made it better for those that truly do need it. Medicaid is an essential program, for those who need it. However, there’s so much waste in it.”

Buddy Carter (1957) State Senator

Rep. Buddy Carter: ‘We Can Cut Medicaid Costs Through Eliminating Waste, Fraud, Abuse’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/02/exclusive-rep-buddy-carter-can-cut-medicaid-costs-eliminating-waste-fraud-abuse/ (November 2, 2016)