1. “To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don’t you? Really, I’m not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.” – Linus Torvalds
2. “People who are doing things for fun do things the right way by themselves.” – Linus Torvalds
3. “If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.” – Linus Torvalds
4. “Don’t hurry your code. Make sure it works well and is well designed. Don’t worry about timing.” – Linus Torvalds
5. “All operating systems suck, but Linux just sucks less.” – Linus Torvalds
6. “I have an ego the size of a small planet.” – Linus Torvalds
7. “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
8. “I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly because they know they don’t have to.” – Linus Torvalds
9. “I’m generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works.” – Linus Torvalds
10. “One of the questions I’ve always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat – and there are a number of other Linux companies going public – basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.” – Linus Torvalds
11. “Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.” – Linus Torvalds
12. “People enjoy the interaction on the Internet, and the feeling of belonging to a group that does something interesting: that’s how some software projects are born.” – Linus Torvalds
13. “A computer is like air conditioning – it becomes useless when you open Windows.” – Linus Torvalds
14. “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, complain.” – Linus Torvalds
15. “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
16. “I don’t expect to go hungry if I decide to leave the University. Resume: Linux looks pretty good in many places.” – Linus Torvalds
17. “In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.” – Linus Torvalds
18. “If you want an application to be portable, you don’t necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently.” – Linus Torvalds
19. “Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.” – Linus Torvalds
20. “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
21. “Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.” – Linus Torvalds
22. “I try to avoid long-range plans and visions – that way I can more easily deal with anything new that comes up.” – Linus Torvalds
23. “I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or ‘big thinker.’ I don’t have any lofty goals.” – Linus Torvalds
24. “The thing with Linux is that the developers themselves are actually customers too: that has always been an important part of Linux.” – Linus Torvalds
25. “I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended.” – Linus Torvalds
26. “There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they’d still be wrong.” – Linus Torvalds
27. “I am not out to destroy Microsoft, that would be a completely unintended side effect.” – Linus Torvalds
28. “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
29. “If you start doing things because you hate others and want to screw them over, the end result is bad.” – Linus Torvalds
30. “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
31. “Real quality means making sure that people are proud of the code they write, that they’re involved and taking it personally.” – Linus Torvalds
32. “Developers have the attention spans of slightly moronic woodland creatures.” – Linus Torvalds
33. “Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.” – Linus Torvalds
34. “In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.” – Linus Torvalds
35. “I don’t think commercialization is the answer to anything. It’s just one more facet of Linux, and not the deciding one by any means.” – Linus Torvalds
36. “Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter what the circumstances.” – Linus Torvalds
37. “Humans are destined to be party animals, and technology will follow.” – Linus Torvalds
38. “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” – Linus Torvalds
39. “In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.” – Linus Torvalds
40. “Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there’s only one of me.” – Linus Torvalds
41. “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” – Linus Torvalds
42. “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
43. “Language is one of the fundamental principles of human understanding. It is the way we interact with each other and how we grasp the world we live in. Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.” – Linus Torvalds
44. “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
45. “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
46. “That’s what makes Linux so good: you put in something, and that effort multiplies. It’s a positive feedback cycle.” – Linus Torvalds
47. “The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.” – Linus Torvalds
48. “Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it.” – Linus Torvalds
49. “Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.” – Linus Torvalds
50. “If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.” – Linus Torvalds
51. “I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It’s the right way to do things.” – Linus Torvalds
52. “I am not a visionary. I’m an engineer. I’m 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.” – Linus Torvalds
53. “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
54. “Non-technical questions sometimes don’t have an answer at all.” – Linus Torvalds
55. “I see myself as a technical person who chose a great project and a great way of doing that project.” – Linus Torvalds
56. “I made very sure that I did not get involved with any of the commercial Linux companies, exactly so that I would be neutral and not ever seen as “working for the competition”.” – Linus Torvalds
57. “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
58. “On the internet nobody can hear you being subtle.” – Linus Torvalds
59. “Me trying to make a business around Linux would have been a total disaster.” – Linus Torvalds
60. “I’d argue that everybody wants to do something that matters” – Linus Torvalds
61. “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
62. “You won’t get sued for anticompetitive behavior.” – Linus Torvalds
63. “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
64. “I’m basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do.” – Linus Torvalds
65. “While I may not get any money from Linux, I get a huge personal satisfaction from having written something that people really enjoy using, and that people find to be the best alternative for their needs.” – Linus Torvalds
66. “No-one has ever called me a cool dude. I’m somewhere between geek and normal.” – Linus Torvalds
67. “People who are doing things for fun do things the right way by themselves.” – Linus Torvalds
68. “An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program.” – Linus Torvalds
69. “All operating systems suck, but Linux just sucks less.” – Linus Torvalds