Larry Wall People Quotations

I want people to use Perl. I want to be a positive ingredient of the world and make my American history. So, whatever it takes to give away my software and get it used, that's great.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself.

So please don't think I have a 'down' on the MVS people. I'm just pulling off their arms to beat other people over the head with.

There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin.

Well, you know, Hubbard had a bunch of people sworn to commit suicide when he died. So of course he never officially died...

I'd make people say 'use Fork;' if I thought I could get away with it.

I want to see people using Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but also socially.

(To someone at New York University) If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York.

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby .

Not that I'm against sneaking some notions into people's heads upon occasion. (Or blasting them in outright.

We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.

But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others.

The trouble with being quoted a lot is that it makes other people think you're quoting yourself when in fact you're merely repeating yourself.

I've had to learn kind of sense when the questions would be coming and be ready to handle them. There's a lot of education and reiteration that happens on these online channels and sometimes it's tempting to just say, "Well, just go and read the documentation," but you know, people appreciate being led along and taught and mentored.

What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?

It's easier to make up sayings people like to hear than sayings they like to heed.

I'm not too concerned about the future of Perl after me, because I see how these people are interacting with each other and even when I'm not there, they are helping each other and solving each other's problems in a way that I could not do, even if I were there.

People get annoyed when you try to debug them.