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Whenever we write an axiom, a critic can say that the axiom is true only in a certain context. With a little ingenuity the critic can usually devise a more general context in which the precise form of the axiom doesn't hold. [...] There simply isn't a most general context.

— 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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Attribution

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.