Creating in new media always has that deeper possibility. You might be creating a medium itself. You might be creating creating.
Something happens to companies when they get to be a few billion dollars. They sort of turn into vanilla companies. They add a lot of layers of management. They get really into process rather than result, rather than products. Their soul goes away. And that's the biggest thing that John Sculley and myself will get measured on five years from now, six years... Were we able to grow a ten billion dollar company that didn't lose its soul?
We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after he grows up.
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic.
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
332. Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.
68. Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
402. Begin each day with some of your favourite music.
374. Just to see how it feels, for the next 24 hours refrain from criticizing anybody or anything.
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
You're never too old to become the person you might have been.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'
If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas.
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
The Internet is living proof that human beings who are able to communicate freely and conveniently will choose to be socially cooperative and selfless.
Perhaps we aren't capable of understanding what the Net is doing any more than a bee can understand the purpose of a beehive, or an ant can understand an ant hill.
When the original Macintosh was introduced in 1984, it was $2,500. Today it is worth about $15... If you had spent that $2,500 on Apple stock instead of a computer, you would have seen it increase to a high of $3,147,743.75 in the glory days of the Mac. Today, that same stock would be worth about $15.
Unix is not like other computer systems. There is a feeling of elegance and charm that hides behind every esoteric command and within every technical rule.
In retrospect, we can see that the ideas within Unix served as the basis of modern operating system design. Still, I suspect that the original Unix programmers did not fully understand the significance of what they had invented; for Unix is nothing less than a way of thinking: a modern implementation of the nucleus of human creativity.
Live with Unix long enough and you will change. You will become more creative, and you will come to understand the spirit of creation in others.
Unix system programmers will often talk about the connection between a client program and a server as the "client-server relationship". (Indeed, for many programmers, this is the most enduring relationship they have ever had.)
We sometimes use the word "finger" as a verb, meaning to use the finger program to check out someone. For example, you might say to someone you meet at a dance, "If you forget my home phone number, just finger me." (Yes, Unix people really do talk like this.)
You will find that the Unix file system has a compelling beauty: everything makes sense.
Part of the charm of Unix is, all of a sudden, having a great insight and saying to yourself, "So THAT's why they did it that way."
Unix was not designed to be learned; Unix was designed to be used. In other words, it can be confusing and time-consuming to learn Unix. However, once you have mastered the skills you need, for whatever work you want to do, working with Unix is fast and easy.
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Groundless hope, like unconditional love, is probably the only kind that counts…
I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want.”
““What they want is better products for free.
Web sites should be like disposable razors; Very sharp for a while until they grow so dull they're painful and it's time to toss them out and get a new one.
There are three types of questions:
questions that seek information -- these I will always answer;
questions that are asked to demonstrate the brilliance of the questioner -- these I will answer if the answer is of benefit to the rest of the class;
questions that are asked to demonstrate the ignorance of the teacher -- these I never answer.
Having personally experienced both stupendous success and colossal failure, I can state with confidence that the difference between the two is, in fact, quite slim. The erroneous notion that there is a major difference between the actions of successful and unsuccessful people causes millions of individuals to cling to the mistaken belief that success is the result of being privy to some tenaciously guarded, mysterious secret....I can absolutely assure you that there is no big secret.
When a thing is new, people say, 'It is not true.' Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say, 'It is not important.' Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say, 'Anyway, it is not new.'
No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back.
You know how you felt when you were a teenager and it was like you were going to conquer the world? well, WHAT HAPPENED?
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
They say you always hurt the one you love. And we all loved each other
Yoko and Linda have taken a lot of shit; but the break-up wasn't their fault. It was just that suddenly we were all 30 and married and changed
C: "I mean what things might have made a difference for you, and what things,
that if someone is ten years younger than you are- you're about 22/23- is 12 or
13 and watching this TV and watching you, and desperately feels a creative
spirit, you know. What do they need, you know, what mistakes did you make or
what did you learn along the way? ...you know, becoming a teenager at 13 and
22?"
J: "I think that um, two things. Knowing there really aren't mistakes, to be
very adventurous and brave in your life. Love bravely, live bravely, be
courageous, there's really nothing to lose. There's no wrong you can't make
right again, so be kinder to yourself, you know, have fun, take chances.
There's no bounds."
"We live our lives in front of each other. When I was living in my car and record labels started coming down, I listened back the tapes and I wasn't good, you know what I mean, but I was really sincere. And that's what people really wanted. And all you can do is be honest, I think, you know as long as you're working toward it, you're going to make mistakes but that's alright. It's like a jalopy winning the Indy 5000. It's a tremendous honor, really a tremendous honor. I feel silly, I think I'm the big dork up there, you know? (laughs) It's something I wasn't even planning or counting on or even hoping for. Even a nomination is I'll never get one nomination. Ah, so it's stunning. It takes a variety of artists to move and change society because everybody's at a different place to be touched. Um, so I'll feel good that anybody wins, really honestly. You always feel better when you sing. Music touches people's hearts. You know, it doesn't go through your mental capacity, it just moves you and it will let you cry. It's worth it doing a show and when you touch a crowd and move yourself at the same time. You change lives and you change the world."
"I can be very drunk in a club in Oxford on a Monday night and some guy comes up to you and buys you a drink and says that the last record you made changed his life. That means something."
"The video of 'Paranoid Android' has been censored by MTV. They took all nipples out of the cartoon, but they had no problem with the scene in which a man cuts off his own arms and legs."
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.
Language designers love to argue about why this language or that language must be better or worse a priori, but none of these arguments really matter a lot. Ultimately all language issues get settled when users vote with their feet. If Tcl makes people more productive then they will use it; when some other language comes along that is better (or if it is here already), then people will switch to that language. This is The Law, and it is good. The Law says to me that Scheme (or any other Lisp dialect) is probably not the "right" language: too many people have voted with their feet over the last 30 years. I encourage all Tcl dis-believers to produce the "right" language(s), make them publically available, and let them be judged according to The Law.
If music can ease even a tiny fraction of the prejudice and intolerance in this world, then it's worth trying....And if we fail, if we all get swallowed up by big biznis before we achieve a thing, then we'll havta face the scorn of tomorrow's generation. But we're gonna have a good try. Fancy joining us?
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
If you are angry with someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes... then you'll be a mile away from them, and you'll have their shoes.
I never knew what do do with all those years of one's life: trot around in them forever like old boots - or sever them, let them fly free?
Of course, one couldn't really do either. But there was always the trying, and pretending. And then there was finally someplace in between where one lived.
Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical about [the goto statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
... with proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.
The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases. The terrible temptation to tweak should be resisted unless the payoff is really noticeable.
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a "DestroyBaghdad" procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a "DestroyCity" procedure, to which "Baghdad" could be given as a parameter.
It's hard to read through a book on the principles of magic without glancing at the cover periodically to make sure it isn't a book on software design.
Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling---the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
It must be hard for parents, I guess, when they see that things aren't working out for their children, but that their children can no longer be reached by the old parental routes, because those roads are now much too long.
When I nestled into Laura's back in the night, I was afraid because I didn't want to lose her, and we always lose someone, or they lose us, in the end. I'd rather not take the risk. I'd rather not come home from work one day in ten or twenty years' time to be faced with a pale, frightened woman saying that she'd been shitting blood -- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but this is what happens to people -- and then we go to the doctor and then the doctor says it's inoperable and then . . . . I wouldn't have the guts, you know? I'd probably just take off, live in a different city under an assumed name, and Laura would check in to the hospital to die and they'd say, "Isn't your partner coming to visit?" and she'd say, "No, when he found out about the cancer he left me." Great guy! "Cancer? Sorry, that's not for me! I don't like it!" Best not to put yourself in that position. Best leave it all alone.
"Have you slept with him yet?" and it's all over.
"Is that why you wanted to see me?"
"I guess."
"Oh, Rob."
I just want to ask the question again, straightaway; I want an answer, I don't want "Oh, Rob," and a pitying stare.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say that you haven't, and for your answer to be the truth."
"I can't do that." She can't look at me when she's saying it, either.
...and my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.
Effective interfaces are visually apparent and forgiving, instilling in their users a sense of control. Users quickly see the breadth of their options, grasp how to achieve their goals, and do their work.
...major improvements in interface design are both profitable and moral — profitable because a good interface is cheaper to implement, is more productive, is easier to maintain, has lower training costs, and requires less customer support than a bad interface — moral because it brings smiles to the faces and erases furrows from the brows of users. One can do good and yet do well by rethinking interface design.
Craziness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows?
An oak tree is just a nut that held its ground
"The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney. ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney ... And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They all are like that."
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy god-mothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found the last bug."
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.
Some people make me sad, see? Not you, or anything in particular just the human race in general and our delusions, what we think, what we try and understand, what we'll never know. But people together make me happy because they are happy, and they smile, and everything is so much more complete. Alone, we don't mean as much as we'd like to think.
First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward worlda world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ringthis lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone elsebut that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
"Okay, Charlie ... I'll make this easy. When the whole thing with Craig happened, what did you think?" She really wanted to know.
I said "Well, I thought a lot of things. But mostly, I thought that your being sad was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it meant that I woulld never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay. That's when I realised I really loved you."
She sat down on the floor with me. She spoke quiet.
"Charlie, don't you get it? I can't feel that. It's sweet and everything, but it's like you're not even there sometimes. It's great that you listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder. What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You have to do things."
"Like what?" I asked. My mouth was dry.
"I don't know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want [...]"
I'm kind of jealous of the life I'm supposedly leading.
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.