Alan Kay Quotes

Quotes about:

• It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.

  Alan Kay

  Inspirational, Easier

  18 Copy quote

• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

  60 Copy quote

• If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.

  Alan Kay

  Challenges, Problem, Failing

  5 Copy quote

• The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.

  Alan Kay

  Firsts, Language, Programming

  57 Copy quote

• I think the trick with knowledge is to “acquire it, and forget all except the perfume” - because it is noisy and sometimes drowns out one's own “brain voices”. The perfume part is important because it will help find the knowledge again to help get to the destinations the inner urges pick.

  Alan Kay

  Thinking, Voice, Brain

  7 Copy quote

• Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

  Alan Kay

  Simple, Simplicity, Should

  8 Copy quote

• Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.

  Alan Kay

  Gold, Weight, Silver

  6 Copy quote

• I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

  Alan Kay

  Mind, Programming, Term

  "The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet". Alan Kay's keynote at OOPSLA conference, www.youtube.com. 1997.

  19 Copy quote

• The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

  Alan Kay

  Ideas, Computer, Instruments

  "Face to Face: Alan Kay Still Waiting for the Revolution". Interview with Lars Kongshem, www.scholastic.com. April/May 2003.

  5 Copy quote

• People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, People, Serious

  Creative Think talk, www.folklore.org. July 20, 1982.

  86 Copy quote

• Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.

  Alan Kay

  Nature, Flower, Should Have

  68 Copy quote

• Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Worry, Investing, Way

  27 Copy quote

• Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

  Alan Kay

  Research, Labs, Enough

  18 Copy quote

• An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, Important, Firsts

  18 Copy quote

• Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, Born

  "An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay". techland.time.com. April 02, 2013.

  16 Copy quote

• Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

  Alan Kay

  Thinking, Ideas, Make You Think

  15 Copy quote

• Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the "Aha." Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in - the one that we think is reality.

  Alan Kay

  Art, Jobs, Laughter

  "Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk - and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

  21 Copy quote

• Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

  Alan Kay

  Wisdom, Perspective

  Creative Think talk, www.folklore.org. July 20, 1982.

  18 Copy quote

• I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

  Alan Kay

  Arrogance, Computer, Nano

  YouTube Channel "Jeff Gonis"/"Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997 - The computer revolution hasnt happened yet", www.youtube.com. February 11, 2013.

  21 Copy quote

• The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

  Alan Kay

  Law, Track, Want

  "The AI Business: The Commercial Uses of Artificial Intelligence". Book edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Karen Prendergast, 1984.

  22 Copy quote

• Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great road has no final destination. The journey itself is the reward.

  Alan Kay

  Journey, Civilization, Understanding

  4 Copy quote

• Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

  Alan Kay

  Funny Inspirational, Integrity, Technology

  "A Conversation with Alan Kay: Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk — and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman in ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

  20 Copy quote

• The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

  Alan Kay

  Reality, Belief, Problem

  4 Copy quote

• I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.

  Alan Kay

  Teacher, Lying, Book

  22 Copy quote

• Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging has to be done by others.

  Alan Kay

  People, Trying, Debugging

  4 Copy quote

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