Abelson Quotes & Sayings

The more culturally different or remote the retirement relocation, the longer and more difficult the adjustment will be with the least likelihood of success"

For those planning out-of-country moves to exotic locations — Lee Johnson

Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals who love knowledge and the creation of it ... Thus, it is the communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of science. — Philip Abelson

All art is an imitation of nature. — Seneca The Elder

Congress is good at doing two things: one is nothing, and the other is overreacting. — Hal Abelson

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that's the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment. A World of Wealth is not only a lively read, but an exceptionally enlightening and rewarding one to boot. — Alan Abelson

Never was there a creature more appropriately placed to be the poster girl for euthanasia. — Dawn French

Then he was done. He pulled away, rolled onto his back. "I'm sorry," he said. "You're welcome," she said. She believed in answering what people meant, not what they said. — Orson Scott Card

Don't feel so sad and disappointed when the telephone conversation with a friend starts to slow down and become stilted. Just try to be smart, lay it gentle and see it as a great given opportunity, a set up to draw attention to your long awaited goals. — Euginia Herlihy

Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach. — Albert Einstein

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write. — Nikki Giovanni

If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas. — Hal Abelson

We choose exile as a vantage point; from exile we look back on the rejected — James Wright

On December 17, 1984, I had surgery to remove two inches of my left lung due to pneumonia. After two hours of surgery the doctors told my mother I had AIDS. — Ryan White

I view my strongest competition as myself. You're always trying to top yourself, rather than worrying about what other people are doing. — John C. Reilly

How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year! — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. — Hal Abelson

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. — Hal Abelson

A real wolf would finish a wounded animal. — George R R Martin

Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement. — Hal Abelson

I made a penny for each paper delivered every day, plus 2 cents for Sunday papers. I had 120 customers. For a 10-year-old kid in the 1940s, that was a lot of money. — David Boies

Do you know what investing for the long run but listening to market news everyday is like? It's like a man walking up a big hill with a yo-yo and keeping his eyes fixed on the yo-yo instead of the hill. — Alan Abelson

Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization. — Hal Abelson

In a correction, other people's stocks go down, in a bear market, your stocks go down. — Alan Abelson

There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion. — Hal Abelson

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes ... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. — Hal Abelson

We have also obtained a glimpse of another crucial idea about languages and program design. This is the approach of statified design, the notion that a complex system should be structured as a sequence of levels that are described using a sequence of languages. Each level is constructed by combining parts that are regarded as primitive at that level, and the parts constructed at each level are used as primitives at the next level. The language used at each level of a stratified design has primitives, means of combination, and means of abstraction appropriate to that level of detail. — Hal Abelson

What's important is not just to develop the technology; it's to develop the processes. — Hal Abelson

Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. — Hal Abelson

A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a framework within which we organize our ideas about processes. — Hal Abelson