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Program designers have a tendency to think of the users as idiots who need to be controlled. They should rather think of their program as a servant, whose master, the user, should be able to control it. If designers and programmers think about the apparent mental qualities that their programs will have, they'll create programs that are easier and pleasanter — more humane — to deal with.

— John McCarthy

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More quotes by John McCarthy

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

One can even conjecture that Lisp owes its survival specifically to the fact that its programs are lists, which everyone, including me, has regarded as a disadvantage.

Comparing oneself with Galileo or Einstein is certainly good for the ego — provided one refrains from going into too much detail.

When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found.

John McCarthy (1983)

An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.

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