Alan Kay Quotes

A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.

If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.

By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.

It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.

The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.

Bad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated.

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough.

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet.