Grace Hopper Quotes

“A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.”

“At any given moment, there is always a line representing what your boss will believe. If you step over it, you will not get your budget. Go as close to that line as you can.”

“Developing a compiler was a logical move; but in matters like this, you don't run against logic — you run against people who can't change their minds.”

“From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.”

“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”

“I am now going to make you a gift that will stay with you the rest of your life. For the rest of your life, every time you say, "We've always done it that way," my ghost will appear and haunt you for twenty-four hours.”

“I'm totally against women in combat, because we live in a culture and a society that imposes on every man the concept of women and children first... If you had a man and a woman trying to go through some dangerous woods, the man's instinct would be to protect the woman. Therefore you weaken the man.
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“I've always been more interested in the future than in the past.”

“I’ve always objected to doing anything over again if I had already done it once.”

“If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.”

“If one ox could not do the job they did not try to grow a bigger ox, but used two oxen. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not to get a bigger computer, but to build systems of computers and operate them in parallel.”

“If you do something once, people will call it an accident. If you do it twice, they call it a coincidence. But do it a third time and you've just proven a natural law!”

“It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

“Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down.
Respect for one's superiors; care for one's crew.”

“Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.”

“No computer is ever going to ask a new, reasonable question. It takes trained people to do that.”

“One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.”

“Some day, on the corporate balance sheet, there will be an entry which reads 'Information' for in most cases, the information is more valuable than the hardware which processes it.”

“The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's simply larger than it needs to be.”

“The most damaging phrase in the language is: 'It's always been done that way.'”

“The only phrase I've ever disliked is, 'Why, we've always done it that way.' I always tell young people, 'Go ahead and do it. You can always apologize later.'”

“There sat that beautiful big machine whose sole job was to copy things and do addition. Why not make the computer do it? That’s why I sat down and wrote the first compiler. It was very stupid. What I did was watch myself put together a program and make the computer do what I did.”

“They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”

“To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.”

“We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.”

“You don't manage people, you manage things. You lead people.”