Linus Torvalds Quotes

1. “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.”

— Linus Torvalds

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2. “A computer is like air conditioning – it becomes useless when you open Windows.”

— Linus Torvalds

3. “Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”

— Linus Torvalds

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4. “Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.”

— Linus Torvalds

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5. “Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.”

— Linus Torvalds

6. “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, complain.”

— Linus Torvalds

7. “Don’t hurry your code. Make sure it works well and is well designed. Don’t worry about timing.”

— Linus Torvalds

8. “All operating systems suck, but Linux just sucks less.”

— Linus Torvalds

9. “If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.”

— Linus Torvalds

10. “Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there’s only one of me.”

— Linus Torvalds

11. “In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.”

— Linus Torvalds

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12. “Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.”

— Linus Torvalds

13. “I have an ego the size of a small planet.”

— Linus Torvalds

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14. “I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended.”

— Linus Torvalds

15. “Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it.”

— Linus Torvalds

16. “Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter what the circumstances.”

— Linus Torvalds

17. “People who are doing things for fun do things the right way by themselves.”

— Linus Torvalds

18. “Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.”

— Linus Torvalds

19. “My name is Linus, and I am your God.”

— Linus Torvalds

20. “In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I’m talking to journalists I just say “programmer” or something like that.”

— Linus Torvalds

21. “An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program.”

— Linus Torvalds

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22. “I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it’s the only area where Linux hasn’t completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.”

— Linus Torvalds

23. “I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light.”

— Linus Torvalds

24. “In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.”

— Linus Torvalds

25. “There are lots of Linux users who don’t care how the kernel works, but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is.”

— Linus Torvalds

26. “An individual developer like me cares about writing the new code and making it as interesting and efficient as possible. But very few people want to do the testing.”

— Linus Torvalds

27. “Non-technical questions sometimes don’t have an answer at all.”

— Linus Torvalds

28. “Every time I see some piece of medical research saying that caffeine is good for you, I high-five myself. Because I’m going to live forever.”

— Linus Torvalds

29. “I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It’s the right way to do things.”

— Linus Torvalds

30. “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

— Linus Torvalds

31. “Developers have the attention spans of slightly moronic woodland creatures.”

— Linus Torvalds

32. “See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.”

— Linus Torvalds

33. “I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or ‘big thinker.’ I don’t have any lofty goals.”

— Linus Torvalds

34. “I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat.”

— Linus Torvalds

35. “If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.”

— Linus Torvalds

36. “You won’t get sued for anticompetitive behavior.”

— Linus Torvalds

37. “I try to avoid long-range plans and visions – that way I can more easily deal with anything new that comes up.”

— Linus Torvalds

38. “The way to do good basic design isn’t actually to be really smart about it, but to try to have a few basic concepts.”

— Linus Torvalds

39. “The thing with Linux is that the developers themselves are actually customers too: that has always been an important part of Linux.”

— Linus Torvalds

40. “I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”

— Linus Torvalds

41. “The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.”

— Linus Torvalds

42. “I’m interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn’t started as any kind of rebellion against the ‘evil Microsoft empire.’”

— Linus Torvalds

43. “In many cases, the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary.”

— Linus Torvalds

44. “When you say ‘I wrote a program that crashed Windows,’ people just stare at you blankly and say ‘Hey, I got those with the system, for free.’”

— Linus Torvalds

45. “On the internet nobody can hear you being subtle.”

— Linus Torvalds

46. “Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver.”

— Linus Torvalds

47. “In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.”

— Linus Torvalds

48. “I am not out to destroy Microsoft, that would be a completely unintended side effect.”

— Linus Torvalds

49. “I think the term “intellectual property” should be avoided, not because it’s a bad term, but because it mixes things up that shouldn’t be mixed up. There are different forms, and they hardly have anything to do with each other.”

— Linus Torvalds

50. “I don’t actually go to that many conferences. I do that a couple of times a year. Normally, I am not recognized; people don’t throw their panties at me. I’m a perfectly normal person sitting in my den just doing my job.”

— Linus Torvalds