Gosper Quotes & Sayings

Usually discover that we've had a wrong perception — Thich Nhat Hanh

There is still an overwhelming social compulsion-an insanity of consensus, if you will-to get rich from life rather than live richly, to "do well" in the world instead of living well. — Rolf Potts

Pa had found it and brought gold from it, and pa must have come — Louis L'Amour

The audiences certainly have [declined]. If I go to the theatre now I find people come there to eat and smoke and talk to one another. And look like scarecrows. — Evelyn Waugh

If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine independence. — Bill Gosper

Weizenbaum did not acknowledge the beauty of the hacker devotion itself ... orthe very idealism of the Hacker Ethic. He had not seen, as Ed Fredkin had, Stew Nelson composing code on the TECO editor while Greenblatt and Gosper watched: without any of the three saying a word, Nelson was entertaining the others, encoding assembly-language tricks which to them, with their absolute mastery of that PDP-6 "language," had the same effect as hilariously incisive jokes. And after every few instructions there would be another punch line in this sublime form of communication ... The scene was a demonstration of sharing which Fredkin never forgot. — Anonymous

A data structure is just a stupid programming language. — Bill Gosper

They had drifted apart, as people do when they promise to stay in touch; the ones who are going to stay in touch don't need to promise. — Edward St. Aubyn