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There’s nothing like the pithy words of a rockstar programmer, athlete, or revolutionary figure to inspire you to make the world better. Here are a few of my favorite quotes that I’ve collected over the last few years.

My Favorite Quotes of All Time

“Probably the biggest lie told in schools … is that the way to succeed is through following “the rules.” In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently.” — Paul Graham

“The spirit of resistance to government, is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” — Thomas Jefferson

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.” — Jacob Hornberger

Computers

“The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games.” — Eugene Jarvis

“Usenet has grown astronomically. We’re having many tens of megabytes of files sent every day.” — Exploring Internet (VHS tape, 1994) <– LOL

“[To a class of CS 106B students] You should try opening up the STL header files some time — it will be a very eye-opening experience, sort of how looking directly at the Sun is a eye-open –err, eye-closing experience.” — Keith Schwarz

“More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason — including blind stupidity.” — W.A. Wulf

“Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?” — Brian Kernighan

“There was a computer that we shipped where the speaker’s magnet was right next to the hard drive. Now, when you played a sound, it caused the hard drive’s read/write head to misalign. So in the midst of playing your Quicktime movie, your computer would completely freeze because it played a sound. And I was like, “what kind of engineers do we have around here that would put a magnet right next to your computer’s hard drive?”

“Jesus Christ… it’s just… it beeped, and it crashed.”

And then they wanted me — believe it or not, this is the solution — they wanted me to change the decibels of the speaker so that it wouldn’t interfere with the hard drive. I mean, you’re kidding me. That’s… Classic.

Engineers are retarded. They have some kind of brain damage that allows them to not have social skills so they can concentrate long enough to write code. But it’s a disease.

That’s why I had to quit. I’m like an engineer in recovery. I don’t want to write code anymore. It just makes you retarded.

Get a girlfriend. Get a life.” — Jim Reekes from Welcome to Macintosh

[About the Motorola Droid camera auto-focus feature] “There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.

The 17th is the start of a new “works correctly” cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.” — Google engineer, Dan Morrill

Education

“Public schools don’t fail to educate students. They succeed at dumbing them down. The true purpose of compulsory education is to make people childish, docile, conformist, obedient, and predictable – and to squash qualities like dissent, originality, leadership, and independence.” — Tom Finnigan

Freedom

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” — Thomas Paine

“Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.” — Gerard K. O’Neill

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” — Edmund Burke

“I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.” — ?

“Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.” — Cory Doctorow

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nerd Culture

“My youngest daughter is 13 months old, and in her limited vocabulary alongside essentials like ‘mom-mom’, ‘da-da’, and ‘meow’ she knows to say ‘zhooom’ and wave her arm around when she wants me to get a lightsaber down off a shelf for her to play with. As far as I’m concerned that’s Parent of the Year Award material right there.” — Aurich Lawson

Sports

“What I want is to be number one.” — Steve Prefontaine

“Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.” — Steve Prefontaine

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” — Michael Jordan

“At home I am a nice guy: but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.” — Muhammad Ali

“The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.” — Bobby Knight

War

“There never was a good war or a bad peace.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” — Peter Ustinov

“If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” — Moshe Dayan

“Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.” — Colman McCarthy

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.” — John Lennon