Language quotes

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Isaac_Asimov

Science and Mathematics

“It is quite possible that mathematics was invented in the ancient Middle East to keep track of tax receipts and grain stores. How odd that out of this should come a subtle scientific language that can effectively describe and predict the most arcane aspects of the Universe.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, chapter epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 68, page 265. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.

David_Auerbach

Natural Language Truth

“Few would say natural language is the ideal mechanism for expressing truths about the world.”
  • Source: David Auerbach, in the article “Bitwise: A Life in Code” published in 2019 in Communications of the ACM, Volume 62, Issue 9 (September). DOI: 10.1145/3347864.

Bible_Verses

Tower Of Babel (Genesis 11:4-6)

(4) “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
(5) “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.”
(6) “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

Robert_N_Britcher

Consciousness

“Consciousness is a word created by humans, in this case English-speaking humans, to describe something humans know nothing about.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 28.

Requirements Testing

“Requirements testing is a subtle way of treating a nonlinear, unpredictable system as if it were a discrete symbol like a number or a word. The potential and the actual become muddled. Requirements are natural language statements, peppered in places with arithmetic. These are discrete and usually quite vague representations of the system as it might become. But the truth is that two teams writing requirements for the same system would describe them differently, and neither would get it quite right, simply because 'right' cannot be known until the system is built. ... Requirements testing is a little like trying to reduce crime in England by running a test for each line in the Magna Carta. In practice, rhetoric replaces the scientific method. As with mathematical proofs, the quest for 'true or not false' soon turns into a party - a not very cordial party - marked by endless debate over whether this sentence or that sentence has been verified by this moment of behavior or that.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 157.

Theory Informs Programming

“...theory has informed Programming largely through programming languages.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 18.

DeMarco and Lister

Project Politics

"The cause of failure most frequently cited by our survey participants was 'politics.' But now observe that people tend to use this word rather sloppily. Included under 'politics' are such unrelated or loosely related things as communication problems, staffing problems, disenchantment with the boss or with the client, lack of motivation, and high turnover. People often use the word politics to describe any aspect of the work that is people-related, but the English language provides a much more precise term for these effects: They constitute the project’s sociology. The truly political problems are a tiny and pathological subset."
  • Source: Book:: Entitled: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Edition: 3rd. Written by: Tom DeMarco; Tim Lister. Date published: 1987; 1999; 2013. Publisher: Addison-Wesley. Country: USA; GBR; CAN; DEU; FRA; ESP; ZAF; AUS; JPN; SGP; MEX. Language: en. ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-0-321-93411-6 (alk paper); 0-321-93411-3 (alk paper). Chapter: 1 (Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing).

Edsger_Wybe_Dijkstra

Math and Language

“Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.”

Humble Programmers

"We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers."
  • Source: Edsger Wybe Dijkstra in an article entitled The Humble Programmer. Written by Edsger W. Dijkstra. Published 1972 in Communications of the ACM, volume 15, number 10. DOI: 10.1145/355604.361591.

Dedre_Gentner

Language and Analogy

“Language is necessary to realize the full potential of our analogical capacity.”
  • Source: Dedre Gentner in the academic paper entitled ‘Bootstrapping the mind: Analogical processes and symbol systems’, Cognitive Science, volume 34, issue 5, 2010, pages 752-775. DOI 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01114.x

J_A_Haar

Software Documentation

“A standard for program documentation when programs are written in symbolic machine language should be set and each program should include this standard documentation in the ‘remarks field’ of the symbolic program.”

Donald_Hoffman

AI Computation

“If we look at an LLM [Large Language Model] or a future AI [Artificial Intelligence], it's going to be some kind of computational system. And computational systems have their limits. We have Gödel who said that at a minimum. I'm betting that you and I are avatars of an infinite intelligence that's the true source of all creativity and that Einstein or any scientist taps into when they come up with their truly original ideas. The first step would be to say, if it's just a computational bias, then it doesn't transcend. It doesn't get to this true originality. But then there's a deeper level... These are just avatars in a particular headset. So why can't we create a new avatar in our headset that looks like a computer that is actually an avatar of the deep intelligence? If we are only going to stick with the computational thing... But somehow the [human] avatar is a portal into the infinite consciousness... And we know one way of creating new portals into this infinite consciousness, and that is having kids. So that is one technology that allows us to do that. Once we understand spacetime as a headset, and we understand the headset and at least some layers of its relationship to the infinite reality, that's the source of true insight and true originality and creativity, could we figure out new ways to open up genuine new portals, and might that look like AI… The jury is out.”
  • Source: Donald Hoffman, in the YouTube video entitled “Donald Hoffman's New Approach To Consciousness” channel “Dr Brian Keating”. Online at <https://youtu.be/mU_WBela71Y?si=fNfLLsOsUDRDC1XD> posted 2024-08, retrieved 2024-08. In video at 1:14:40.

Karl_Marx

Pinpricks and Clubs

“It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.”
  • Source: Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843), after the Prussian government dissolved the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, of which Marx was the editor.

Galileo

Universe Mathematical

“The universe...stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics...”
  • Source: Galileo Il Saggiatore (1623)

William_Rowan_Hamilton

Theory and Hypothesis

“This word [theoryJ is employed by English writers in a very loose and improper sense. It is with them usually convertible into hypothesis, and hypothesis is commonly used as another term for conjecture. The terms theory and theoretical are properly used in opposition to the terms practice and practical. In this sense they were exclusively employed by the ancients; and in this sense they are almost exclusively employed by the continental philosophers.”
  • Source: Written by William Rowan Hamilton. Recorded in the book 'Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 84, quote number 84.9, page 325. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.

Carl_Jung

Dream Language

“Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.”
  • Source: Written by Carl G. Jung in ‘The Red Book’, also known as ‘Liber Novus’, which was originally written from 1914 to 1930. It was first published in 2009 by W. W. Norton in a facsimile edition, complete with an English translation. The edition used here is the book ‘The Red Book: Liber Novus: A Reader's Edition’, written by C. G. Jung, edited with an introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani; published by W. W. Norton in 2012; ISBN 978-0393089080; Page 133.

John_von_Neumann

Language Historical

“It is only proper to realize that language is largely a historical accident... It is only reasonable to assume that logics and mathematics are similarly historical, accidental forms of expression.”
  • Source: John von Neumann. (1958). The Computer and the Brain (1st ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Part 2, page 81.

J_Robert_Oppenheimer

Science Starts with Preconception

“Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].”
  • Source: J. Robert Oppenheimer, From 'The Growth of Science and the Structure of Culture', Daedalus (Winter 1958), 87, No. 1, 67.

Ipek_Ozkaya

Next Generation Software Engineers

“With LLMs and their sister AI-driven apps assisting developers, we need to be teaching next-generation software engineers when to trust, how to create evidence to trust, how to do trust assessment rapidly and correctly, and how to improve such assistants.”
  • Source: Ipek Ozkaya, “Application of Large Language Models to Software Engineering Tasks: Opportunities, Risks, and Implications,” in IEEE Software, volume 40, number 3, pages 4-8, May-June 2023, DOI: 10.1109/MS.2023.3248401.

Alan_Perlis

Programming Language

“A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.”

Command Language

“A good system can't have a weak command language.”

Programming Language Wish

“When someone says ‘I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done,’ give him a lollipop.”

Unnatural Natural Language

“Within a computer natural language is unnatural.”

Keywords: Natural_quotes Unnatural_quotes Computer_quotes Language_quotes

Balance Efficiency and Generality

“Our progress, then, is measured by the balance we achieve between efficiency and generality. As the nature of our involvement with computation changes — and it does — the appropriate description of language changes; our emphasis shifts. I feel that our successor model will show such a change. Computer science is a restless infant and its progress depends as much on shifts in point of view as on the orderly development of our current concepts.”


Henri_Poincaré

Scientific Language

“All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.”
  • Source: The Value of Science (1905), in The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method(1946), trans. by George Bruce Halsted, 332.

Herbert_Schildt

C and C++

“C gives the programmer what the programmer wants; few restrictions, few complaints... C++ maintains the original spirit of C, that the programmer not the language is in charge.”
  • Source: Herbert Schildt. In the book entitled C++: The Complete Reference. Written by Herbert Schildt. Fourth edition. Published by McGraw-Hill in 2003. ISBN 978-0072226805. Page 8.

Melvin_Schwartz

Mathematics More than a Language

“Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates. Indeed, the beauty and elegance of the physical laws themselves are only apparent when expressed in the appropriate mathematical framework.”
  • Source: Melvin Schwartz, In Principles of Electrodynamics (1972, 1987), 105.

Rebecca_Shafir

Misunderstanding

“Here’s an alarming fact: of approximately eight hundred thousand words in the English language, we use about eight hundred on a regular basis. Those eight hundred words have fourteen thousand meanings. By division there are about seventeen meanings per word. In other words, we have a one-in-seventeen chance of being understood as we intended. Perhaps you’ve heard of Chisholm’s Third Law — If you explain something so clearly that no one can misunderstand, someone will.”
  • Source: From the book “The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction”, written by Rebecca Z. Shafir, published by Quest Books in 2003. ISBN: ‎978-0835608268,

Herbert_Simon

Computer Programming as Data Structures

“When we write a computer program in any language except machine language, we are really not writing down processes but data structures. These data structures are then interpreted or compiled into processes, that is, into machine-language instructions that the computer can understand and execute. Nevertheless, for most purposes, it is convenient for us simply to ignore the translation step and to treat the computer programs in higher-level languages as representing processes.”

Alfred_Tarski

Language Universality

“This universality of everyday language... is the primary source of all semantic antinomies, like the antinomy of the liar... Every language which is universal... and for which the normal laws of logic hold, must be inconsistent.”

Truth Doubtful

“The very possibility of a consistent use of the expression ‘true sentence’ which is in harmony with the laws of logic and the spirit of everyday language seems to be very questionable, and consequently the same doubt attaches to the possibility of constructing a correct definition of this expression.”

Adequate Truth Definition

“Therefore we can say — considering the failure of previous attempts — that at present we can construct no correct and materially adequate definition of truth for the language under consideration.”

Waldo_and_Boussard

LLM Performance

“GPTs [Generative Pre-trained Transformers] based on LLMs [Large Language Models] perform well on prompts that are more popular and have reached a consensus, yet they struggle with controversial topics or topics with limited data.”
  • Source: From the journal article entitled “GPTs and Hallucination”, in Communications of the ACM, volume 68, number 1, 2025-01. DOI:10.1145/3703757.

Gerald_Weinberg

Management Deskilling

“Even though the nth-level manager may have originally been a programmer, which is rare enough, he has almost certainly lost any programming ability by the time he reaches these heights. Given the rapid change of programming techniques and hardware, the higher-level manager becomes obsolete even if he retains the skills he originally had and keeps them sharply honed, for those languages and those machines are no longer in use. In a small survey of working programmers, only 15 percent of the first-line managers were thought to be as skillful as the programmers themselves, and none of the higher-level managers.”
  • Source: Chapter 6. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.

Eugene_Wigner

Miracle of Mathematics

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”
  • Source: Eugene Paul Wigner, In 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,' Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics (Feb 1960), 13, No. 1 (February 1960). Collected in Eugene Paul Wigner, A.S. Wightman (ed.), Jagdish Mehra (ed.), The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner (1955), Vol. 6, 535.

Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Philosophy Bewitchment

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
  • Source: Ludwig Wittgenstein in “Philisophical Investigations”, published posthumously in 1958 by Macmillan Publishing Company. New York, NY. Part I, paragraph 109. Originally published in German posthumously in 1953.

Edward_Yourdon

Better Programming Languages

“Better coding techniques may do nothing more than help you arrive at a disaster sooner than before. Better programming languages, used without anything else, may be just what your programmers need to develop a brilliant solution to the wrong problem.”
  • Source: Edward Yourdon in the book “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer”. Published in 1992 by Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0-13-203670-3. Chapter 2, section 2.1, page 27.

Shoshana_Zuboff

Technology Leadership

“The questions that we face today are finally about leadership. Will there be leaders who are able to recognize the historical moment and the choices it presents? Will they find ways to create the organizational conditions in which new visions, new concepts, and a new language of workplace relations can emerge? Will they be able to create organizational innovations that can exploit the unique capacities of the new technology and thus mobilize their organization's productive potential to meet the heightened rigors of global competition? Will there be leaders who understand the crucial role that human beings from each organizational stratum can play in adding value to the production of goods and services? If not, we will be stranded in a new world with old solutions. We will suffer through the unintended consequences of change, because we have failed to understand this technology and how it differs from what came before.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 12. ISBN:0465032125.