The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. -- Arthur C. Clarke

Let me try to get this straight: Lisp is a language for describing algorithms. This was JohnMcCarthy's original purpose, anyway: to build something more convenient than a Turing machine. Lisp is not about file, socket or GUI programming - Lisp is about expressive power. (For example, you can design multiple object systems for Lisp, in Lisp. Or implement the now-fashionable AOP. Or do arbitrary transformations on parsed source code.) If you don't value expressive power, Lisp ain't for you. I, personally, would prefer Lisp to not become mainstream: this would necessarily involve a dumbing down. -- VladimirSlepnev

But what is it good for? -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968

Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning. -- Rich Cook

I would rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist who proves to be right. The former sometimes wins, but never the latter. -- "Hoots"

Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts. -- Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon

The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors. ~Napoleon Hill

You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals. ~Booker T. Washington

It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot