Programmes Quotes

• Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

  Martin Fowler

  Inspirational, Funny, Humorous

  Jay Fields, Shane Harvie, Martin Fowler, Kent Beck (2009). “Refactoring: Ruby Edition”, p.36, Pearson Education

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• I have absolutely no doubt at all that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programmes.

  Tony Blair

  Mass Destruction, Iraq, Doubt

  Interview with Matt Peacock, www.abc.net.au. July 9, 2003.

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• Personally, I'd like us to have a few more women on the 'Today' programme.

  Evan Davis

  Today

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• Put simply, behavioural economics argues that human beings' decision-taking is guided by the evolutionary baggage which we bring with us to the present day. Evolution has made us rational to a point, but not perfectly so. It has given us emotions, for example, which programme us to override our rational brain and act more instinctively.

  Evan Davis

  Decision, Brain, Example

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• I rarely come away from presenting the 'Today' programme without some sense of regret. There is always some question that I should have asked, or some point that I should have made. This is annoying but not surprising. Perfection is hard to achieve in a three-hour live programme.

  Evan Davis

  Regret, Should Have, Perfection

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• Now I can broadcast to an audience of several million people on the 'Today' programme. I can talk about the day's news. But on radio, believe it or not, we have notes and scripts. And while we might ad lib the odd wryly amusing asides, they come at the frequency of a suburban bus. About one every 90 minutes.

  Evan Davis

  Believe, People, News

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• I don't like celebrity programmes - but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

  Brian Eno

  Ideas, Evolve

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• My mother was devoted to helping people - with my father's money! - who had great voices but didn't have the financial means to study music. He and my mum gave away dozens of music scholarships, and my mum opened a school in town, introduced opera to children and created fantastic programmes.

  Salma Hayek

  Mother, Children, Father

  "Salma Hayek: My family values". Interview with Elaine Lipworth, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2013.

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• Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Doe, Citizens, Busy

  "The joy of simply faffing around" by Tom Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. August 12, 2008.

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• You can watch a little bit of war from your nice living room - 30 seconds of what's going on in Syria - and when you've had enough, switch over to some celebrity programme. We live our life through screens and images in this way, and we don't know what is real or fake anymore. It doesn't matter.

  Alison Jackson

  Real, War, Nice

  "Alison Jackson On Obama, Assange And Why 'Reality' Doesn't Really Matter". Interview with Sam Parker, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk. October 26, 2012.

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• To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.

  Tahar Ben Jelloun

  Country, People, Different

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• The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.

  Imre Lakatos

  Confused, Ocean, Becoming

  Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie (1980). “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers”, p.50, Cambridge University Press

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• Even the 'Today' programme involves a balance between the worthy-but-heavy items with the worthless-but-entertainingly-light ones.

  Evan Davis

  Light, Balance, Today

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• When I was a kid there were a very select few channels - programmes had to have more of a large appeal and they just didn't offer very much. Now you have a situation where the television world has expanded and there's hundreds of channels.

  Bryan Cranston

  Kids, Television, World

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• Given the right set of circumstances any one of us could become dangerous - so why not show that in our programmes?

  Bryan Cranston

  Why Not, Given, Dangerous

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• We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.

  David Attenborough

  Views, People, Support

  "David Attenborough - Humans are plague on Earth" by Louise Gray, www.telegraph.co.uk. January 22, 2013.

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• I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature.

  David Attenborough

  People, Giving, Credit

  "Life on Air". BBC documentary, 2002.

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• In the old days... it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn't use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.

  David Attenborough

  Use, Facts, Opinion

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• You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

  David Attenborough

  Decision, Environment, Natural

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• The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Men, Political, Politics

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• There's a good television programme called 'Disco 2.' It's quite good but again it's average, average. It's all on a down play. You know we've got this thing in England to be hip is to speak very down - like John Peel. And that just about sums up England. They don't realize when they talk like that, then that is what they represent - absolutely.

  David Bowie

  Average, Play, Television

  David Bowie (2016). “David Bowie: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.19, Melville House

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• The problem with the designated driver programme, it's not a desirable job. But if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At then end of the night drop them off at the wrong house.

  Jeff Bridges

  Funny, Jobs, Humor

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• In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked?

  David Cameron

  Race, Numbers, Focus

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• If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Stupid, Holiday, Thinking

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• The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

  Imre Lakatos

  Successful, Example, Research

  Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie (1980). “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers”, p.48, Cambridge University Press

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