A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us."
On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity [...] for an idiot anything the more complicated it is the more he will admire it, if you make something so clusterfucked he can't understand it he's gonna think you're a god.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is to escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labour passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.
Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.