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  fortune index  all fortunes 
  
 |  |  | #1841 |  | I bet the human brain is a kludge. -- Marvin Minsky
 
 |  |  |  | #1842 |  | I came, I saw, I deleted all your files. 
 |  |  |  | #1843 |  | I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
 -- F. H. Wales (1936)
 
 |  |  |  | #1844 |  | I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them. -- Isaac Asimov
 
 |  |  |  | #1845 |  | I had the rare misfortune of being one of the first people to try and implement a PL/1 compiler.
 -- T. Cheatham
 
 |  |  |  | #1846 |  | I have a very small mind and must live with it. -- E. Dijkstra
 
 |  |  |  | #1847 |  | I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. -- Rob Pike, on X.
 
 Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
 gone in two years.  He was half right.
 -- Dennis Ritchie
 
 Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
 -- Jim Gettys
 
 |  |  |  | #1848 |  | I have not yet begun to byte! 
 |  |  |  | #1849 |  | I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
 advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
 for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and
 after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government
 of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only
 commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even
 the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the
 reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
 If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were
 a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the
 execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some
 justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I
 venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will
 ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if
 made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to
 declare the construction of such machinery impracticable...
 And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed
 by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its
 advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I
 think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
 calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
 In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
 be economized by the aid of machinery.
 -- Charles Babbage, "The Life of a Philosopher"
 
 |  |  |  | #1850 |  | I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with the best people in business administration.  I can assure you on the highest
 authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
 -- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
 publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
 editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
 science of data processing), c. 1957
 
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