25 quotes
From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.
I've always been more interested in the future than in the past.
We must state relationships, not procedures.
Management and the Computer of the Future (1962)
In total desperation, I called over to the engineering building, and I said, "Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me."
I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, "What are you?"
Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.
The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)
We must include in any language with which we hope to describe complex data-processing situations the capability for describing data.
Management and the Computer of the Future (1962)
There's something you learn in your first boot-camp, or training camp: If they put you down somewhere with nothing to do, go to sleep — you don't know when you'll get any more.
At the end of about a week, I called back and said, "I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?"
You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.
The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)
[The Computer] was the first machine man built that assisted the power of his brain instead of the strength of his arm.
I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. ... they carefully told me, computers could only do arithmetic; they could not do programs.
Grace Hopper : Navy Admiral and Computer Pioneer (1989)
Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)
I've received many honors and I'm grateful for them; but I've already received the highest award I'll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy.
The Group started out by trying to design a language for stating procedures, but soon discovered that what was really required was a description of the data and a statement of the relationships between the data sets.
Management and the Computer of the Future (1962)
These priorities are not fixed and are indicated in many cases by the data.
Thus we must have a language and a structure that will take care of the data descriptions and priorities, as well as the operations we wish to perform.
Management and the Computer of the Future (1962)
We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.
The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)
At present, we're putting on paper a lot of stuff that never needed to be on paper. We do need to keep the records. But there isn't any reason for printing them. The next generation growing up with the computers will change that.
It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Misattributed
The most dangerous phrase in the language is 'We've always done it this way!'".
Disputed