Hillis Quotes & Sayings

Picking on another person in their mind justifies and makes their stature higher. People do it interracially. It's amazing how every race, every culture seems to have a culture they pick on. — Rib Hillis

Technology is everything that doesn't work yet. — W. Daniel Hillis

Man must make his choice between ease and wealth; either may be his, but not both. — Newell Dwight Hillis

A human body is a conversation going on, both within the cells and between the cells, and they're telling each other to grow and to die; when you're sick, something's gone wrong with that conversation. — W. Daniel Hillis

It is a curious fact that personal possessions take on fictitious values and exceptional charms when the owner, no matter how generous, is faced with giving them away or even selling them (which usually amounts to the same thing). — Marjorie Hillis

I am convinced that we humans are just at the beginning of our journey, on our way to becoming something more wonderful than we can imagine. — Danny Hillis

I can imagine that if you're a kid growing up somewhere, where you might be gay or you think you're gay, but you don't know who else would be ... you become very closeted. — Rib Hillis

I always felt safe and protected. My dad is 6'6 and 280 pounds, so I basically felt protected, and I aspire to have my kids feel the same way. — Rib Hillis

I would encourage my children to protect themselves if there's any sort of physical abuse against them. I would definitely go speak to the perpetrator, and if the perpetrator was a child, I'd speak to their parents. But I ... Oh my God, I don't know what I'd do if I was privy to watching my kids being bullied! I would do what any parent would, I'd be like a grizzly bear protecting his cubs. — Rib Hillis

If transportation technology was moving along as fast as microprocessor technology, then the day after tomorrow I would be able to get in a taxi cab and be in Tokyo in 30 seconds. — W. Daniel Hillis

Quantity equals scale weight. — Josh Hillis

Be a Communist, a stamp collector, or a Ladies' Aid worker if you must, but for heaven's sake, be something. — Majorie Hillis

Certainly, affairs should not even be thought of before you are thirty. — Marjorie Hillis

Happiness is through helpfulness. Every morning let us build a booth to shelter some one from life's fierce heat. Every noon let us dig some life-spring for thirsty lips. — Newell Dwight Hillis

You can have your beliefs and have your faith, but don't try to impose it one me, and vice versa. — Rib Hillis

We're at a point in time which is analogous to when single-celled organisms were turning into multi-celled organisms. So we're the amoebas. — Danny Hillis

Friendship warms like a sunbeam; charms like a good story; inspires like a brave leader; binds like a golden chain; guides like a heavenly vision ... — Newell Dwight Hillis

Your genome knows much more about your medical history than you do. — W. Daniel Hillis

[Language is] really a pretty amazing invention if you think about it. Here I have a very complicated, messy, confused idea in my head. I'm sitting here making grunting sounds and hopefully constructing a similar messy, confused idea in your head that bears some analogy to it. — Danny Hillis

We are nothing more than a dot amongst the billions of organisms on the Hillis plot — Soroosh Shahrivar

What people mean by the word "technology" is the stuff that doesn't really work yet. — Danny Hillis

What we need is a plan B ... independent of the Internet. [It] doesn't necessarily have to have the performance of the Internet, but the police department has to be able to call up the fire department. — Danny Hillis

People are mostly focused on defending the computers on the Internet, and there's been surprisingly little attention to defending the Internet itself as a communications medium. — W. Daniel Hillis

I have 8-year-old twins, and I want them to grow up in a world where they can be anyone they want without any shame, without holding back, without being judged for it. — Rib Hillis

Design: holding conflicting ideas in your head without difficulty — Danny Hillis

Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man. — Newell Dwight Hillis

Give thy mind to books and libraries, and the literature and lore of the ages will give thee the wisdom of sage and seer. — Newell Dwight Hillis

Self-reliance can turn a salesman into a merchant; a politician into a statesman; an attorney into a jurist; an unknown youth into a great leader. All are to be tomorrow's big leaders - those who in solitude sit above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret trembling on their lips. — Newell Dwight Hillis

If I see Danny Hillis quoted as an expert on MPP one more time, I'm going to puke. — Larry Ellison

It is a regrettable, but undeniable, fact that the most delightful people are seldom big money-makers. — Marjorie Hillis

Abiding happiness is not simply a possibility, but a duty all may live above the troubles of life worry is a poison and happiness is a medicine. — Newell Dwight Hillis

Any process can be improved. Defects that are invisible to the knowledgeable may be obvious to newcomers. The simplest solutions are the best. Repeating all these anecdotes isn't rote monotony - it's calculated strategy. "The rest of us try to muddle around with complicated contradictory goals and it makes it harder for people to help us," says his friend Danny Hillis. "Jeff is very clear and simple about his goals, and the way he articulates them makes it easy for others, because it's consistent. — Brad Stone

If you hear an expert talking about the Internet and saying it [does] this, or it will do that, you should treat it with the same skepticism that you might treat the comments of an economist about the economy or a weatherman about the weather. — Danny Hillis

I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years. If I hurry I should finish the clock in time to see the cuckoo come out for the first time. — Danny Hillis

I was very fortunate. I had a great group of friends in my life, and family, and so I felt a sense of safety and belonging that ... as you grow older, you realize that not everybody does feel that. And there's particular certain groups of kids who always feel like outsiders. But I was very fortunate. — Rib Hillis

You can't discriminate against someone because of their race, color, or religion, but you can discriminate against someone because of their sexual preference, I find it to be abhorrent. — Rib Hillis

I think bullying comes from a person's feeling of self-worth, and so what you do is you find out where you are in a totem pole, and you may slide in somewhere in the middle. So you say, "OK, well there's all these other people who I respect and admire, and there's all these people below me, so I'm going to put on them this sense that they're inferior and I'm going to belittle them, and that's going to raise my stature." — Rib Hillis

There's still another problem which puzzles a lot of people - whether or not a baby will come within the budget. Our sentimental advice is to have one anyway, if you want one and have been through the marriage ceremony. The people who wait till they can afford a baby seldom have one at all except by surprise. — Marjorie Hillis

An attitude of only taking what you need was built into the protocols of the Internet itself. — Danny Hillis

There are hundreds who don't know the difference between a cleansing cream and an emollient - which to our minds is practically the same as being illiterate. — Marjorie Hillis

The computers are in control. We just live in their world. — Danny Hillis

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. — Danny Hillis

Global consciousness is that thing responsible for deciding that pots containing decaffeinated coffee should be orange. — Danny Hillis

One of the most popular narcotics to ease the pain of economy is cherishing the belief that better days are ahead. This is both efficacious and commendable, but it sometimes turns out to be a habit-forming drug ... Things to which you look forward too long are almost invariably disappointing when you get them, and you might die first anyway. — Marjorie Hillis

Remember that nothing is so damaging to self-esteem as waiting for a telephone or door-bell that doesn't ring. — Marjorie Hillis

When I was younger, I had an older brother a year and a half older than me, so we always had each other, and I felt very fortunate in that regard. — Rib Hillis

Never, never, never let yourself feel that anybody ought to do anything for you. Once you become a duty you also become a nuisance. — Marjorie Hillis

There is absolutely no scientific basis or evidence for 'intelligent design.' It is simply a religious assertion, and it has no place in a science course. — David Hillis

Even though [bullying] doesn't actually raise your stature, it might make you feel that way. — Rib Hillis

If you feel like you're not where you want to be in your life, rather than step on someone else's, raise your stature. — Rib Hillis

Last century, when the beams needed replacing, carpenters used oak trees that had been planted in 1386 when the dining hall was first built. The 14th-century builder had planted the trees in anticipation of the time, hundreds of years in the future, when the beams would need replacing. Did the carpenters plant new trees to replace the beams again a few hundred years from now? — Danny Hillis

Failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives. — Newell Dwight Hillis

Hateful people put fear in other people. — Rib Hillis

In almost every technology area that we're ahead in, we're ahead in because the United States leads the world in computers. — W. Daniel Hillis