Quotes by Linus Torvalds

“Some people have told me they dont think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100 mph. Theyd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.”

“My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.”

“A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didnt know you had in a way you dont understand”

“Real programmers dont document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.”

“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.”

“Software is the soul to the lifeless body of the hardware.”

“Given enoug eyeballs, all thugs are callow.”

“Software patents are a huge potential threat to the ability of people to work together on open source. Making it easier for companies and communities that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with the threat.”

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

I am not a visionary. Im an engineer. Im happy with the people who are wandering around looking at the stars but I am looking at the ground and I want to fix the pothole before I fall in.

No-one has ever called me a cool dude. Im somewhere between geek and normal.

Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.

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

I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didnt do.

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.

My name is Linus, and I am your God.

The economics of the security world are all horribly, horribly nasty and are largely based on fear, intimidation and blackmail.

I actually think that Im a rather optimistic and happy person; its just that Im not a very positive person, if you see the difference.

Hey, Im a good software engineer, but Im not exactly known for my fashion sense. White socks and sandals dont translate to good design sense.

By staying neutral, I end up being somebody that everybody can trust. Even if they dont always agree with my decisions, they know Im not working against them.