Top 35 Clifford Stoll Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.”

— Clifford Stoll

Featured in: Understanding Quotes

2. “Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.”

— Clifford Stoll

3. “The first time you do something, it’s science. The second time, it’s engineering. The third time, it’s just being a technician. I’m a scientist. Once I do something, I want to do something else.”

— Clifford Stoll

4. “If we built houses the way we build software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”

— Clifford Stoll

5. “Data isn’t information, any more than fifty tons of cement is a skyscraper.”

— Clifford Stoll

6. “Electronic communication is an instantaneous and illusory contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships.”

— Clifford Stoll

7. “There is a difference between having access to information and having the savvy it takes to interpret it.”

— Clifford Stoll

8. “If you really want to know about the future, don’t ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don’t ask somebody who’s writing code. No, if you want to know what society’s going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.”

— Clifford Stoll

9. “Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.”

— Clifford Stoll

10. “What’s society going to be like when the kids today are phenomenally good at text messaging and spend a huge amount of on-screen time, but have never gone bowling together?”

— Clifford Stoll

11. “We’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”

— Clifford Stoll

12. “Call me a troglodyte; I’d rather peruse those photos alongside my sweetheart, catch the newspaper on the way to work, and page thorough a real book.”

— Clifford Stoll

13. “No computer network with pretty graphics can ever replace the salespeople that make our society work.”

— Clifford Stoll

14. “Minds think with ideas, not information No amount of data, bandwidth, or processing power can substitute for inspired thought.”

— Clifford Stoll

15. “Rather than bringing me closer to others, the time that I spend online isolates me from the most important people in my life, my family, my friends, my neighbourhood, my community.”

— Clifford Stoll

16. “Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of the 1990s.”

— Clifford Stoll

17. “While I admire the insights of many of the people in the world of computing, I get this cold feeling that I speak a different language.”

— Clifford Stoll

18. “The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

— Clifford Stoll

19. “Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?”

— Clifford Stoll

20. “It’s easier to apologize afterwards than getting something allowed in the first place.”

— Clifford Stoll

21. “The Internet is a telephone system that’s gotten uppity.”

— Clifford Stoll

22. “Here are my strong reservations about the wave of computer networks. They isolate us from one another and cheapen the meaning of actual experience. They work against literacy and creativity. They undercut our schools and libraries.”

— Clifford Stoll

23. “Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours later your fingers are yellow and you’re no longer hungry, but you haven’t been nourished.”

— Clifford Stoll

24. “The Internet has no such organization – files are made available at random locations. To search through this chaos, we need smart tools, programs that find resources for us.”

— Clifford Stoll

25. “Cliff, I’d like to take over, but our charter prevents it. NSA can’t engage in domestic monitoring, even if we’re asked. That’s prison term stuff.”

— Clifford Stoll

26. “A box of crayons and a big sheet of paper provides a more expressive medium for kids than computerized paint programs.”

— Clifford Stoll

27. “If you don’t have an e-mail address, you’re in the Netherworld. If you don’t have your own World Wide Web page, you’re a nobody.”

— Clifford Stoll

28. “So what? Somebody’s always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions.” Martha.”

— Clifford Stoll

29. “When I’m online, I’m alone in a room, tapping on a keyboard, staring at a cathode-ray tube.”

— Clifford Stoll

30. “I sense an insatiable demand for connectivity. Maybe all these people have discovered important uses for the Internet. Perhaps some of them feel hungry for a community that our real neighborhoods don’t deliver. At least a few must wonder what the big deal is.”

— Clifford Stoll

31. “Of course. NSA is rumored to tape record every transatlantic telephone conversation. Maybe they’d recorded this session.”

— Clifford Stoll

32. “I spend almost as much time figuring out what’s wrong with my computer as I do actually using it.”

— Clifford Stoll

33. “Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion.”

— Clifford Stoll

34. “Merely that I have a World Wide Web page does not give me any power, any abilities, nor any status in the real world.”

— Clifford Stoll

35. “As the networks evolve, so do my opinions toward them, and my divergent feelings bring out conflicting points of view. In advance, I apologize to those who expect a consistent position from me.”

— Clifford Stoll

36. “It’s a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not the place for reasoned, reflective judgment. Suprisingly often, discussions degenerate into acrimony, insults and flames.”

— Clifford Stoll

37. “As computers replace textbooks, students will become more computer literate and more book illiterate. They’ll be exploring virtual worlds, watching dancing triangles, downloading the latest web sites. But they won’t be reading books.”

— Clifford Stoll

38. “The hacker didn’t succeed through sophistication. Rather he poked at obvious places, trying to enter through unlock doors. Persistence, not wizardry, let him through.”

— Clifford Stoll

39. “Life was full: no hacker is worth missing a Dead concert for.”

— Clifford Stoll