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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

— Alan Perlis

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More quotes by Alan Perlis

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Computer science is neither mathematics nor electrical engineering.

A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

Often it is means that justify ends: Goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.

Programmers should never be satisfied with languages which permit them to program everything, but to program nothing of interest easily.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alan Perlis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.