Linus Torvalds Quotes
24 quotes from Linus Torvalds — Creator of Linux, the open-source operating system that powers most of the world's servers, smartphones (Android), and….
“I was looking for something to do, a project. And I thought, 'OK, I'll write a terminal emulator.' It grew from there.”
“I'm not a visionary. I'm an engineer. I'm happy with the people who are wandering around looking at the stars, but I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in.”
“Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.”
“Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.”
“The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it.”
“The fact that somebody can replicate what you did, or at least try to replicate what you did, is what makes it science. Otherwise it's just voodoo.”
“I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do.”
“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”
“I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”
“I'm not a people person. I'm a technology person. But I do realize that Linux is not just about the technology, it's about the people.”
“Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”
“I like to think that I've been a good maintainer. That I respond to people, that I'm fair, and that I make good technical decisions.”
“The way to do good basic design isn't actually to be really smart about it, but to try to have a few basic concepts that work well together and then apply them very broadly.”
“Software is like sex: it's better when it's free.”
“[Intelligence](/mental-models/intelligence) is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.”
“I want my programs to be readable. I want to be able to understand what the program does by looking at it.”
“The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.”
“Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it.”
“I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works.”
“My name is Linus, and I am your God.”
“I don't expect to go hungry if Linux becomes obsolete.”
“I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.”
“See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.”
“Talk is cheap. Show me the code.”
