Larry Wall Quotes

American business can out-think, out-work, out-perform any nation in the world. But we can't beat the competition if we don't get in the ball game.

At Tatas, we believe that if we are not among the top three in an industry, we should look seriously at what it would take to become one of the top three players.. or think about exiting the industry

How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it.

Benchmark your performance against your best competitors. Think how you can beat them next time.

I think everyone would love to see Jeff Gordon lose or get run into the wall, but I think he uses that - similar to me.

It's my job for Oracle, the number two software company in the world; to become the number one software company in the world. My job is to build better than the competition, sell those products in the marketplace and eventually supplant Microsoft and move from being number two to number one.

EBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I'm a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose, but if we fight in the river, we win.

What really intrigues me is that the totality of all possible Nows of any definite kind has a very special structure. You can think of it as a landscape or country. Each point in the country is a Now.

Glenn must think he's still in space. He's orbiting the issues faster than he orbited earth.

I just don't think the moon is going to be an adequate substitute for the fact that we haven't addressed ourselves to clearing up the slums.

I'm hoping that the suspension of the space program is just that, a suspension, and that it's not the final say in the matter, because I think we need it.

Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question, what will this do to our community? tends toward the right answer for the world.

If some people really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint the angels: only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.

I think that autistic brains tend to be specialized brains. Autistic people tend to be less social. It takes a ton of processor space in the brain to have all the social circuits. I mean after all, the first stone spear was not designed by the totally social people.

A strong pursuit, give no time for the enemy to think, take advantage of victory, uproot him, cut off his escape route.

It’s short-sighted to think ads won’t one day end up wherever humans are - even the moon.

Exploration, of course, is going to new places, but I don't think we go to new places just solely to say: "Well, we've been there," and come back, interesting though it may be. To me, each time we go farther into space we should use that to do basic research - basic research that can't be done before you go there.

I pray. I try to find space to process with a walk on the beach, a hike in the hills. Nature is restorative. I also try not to overreact. I grew up in Ireland, and we are big tea drinkers, and I think it's less about the tea itself and more about the ritual and the moment to prepare.

Americans want to win; bin Laden thinks he's winning now.

I don't think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost.

I think that space flight is a condition of Nature that comes into effect when an intelligent species reaches the saturation point of its planetary habitat combined with a certain level of technological ability... I think it is a built-in gene-directed drive for the spreading of the species and its continuation.

I remember my agent at the time called me and was like, "I've got it! I've found it! I've found your role!" I worked my ass off to get that role, because I think me and three or four other girls tested for it. But it was a great time.

As far as actually setting up colonies of people who would live their whole lives in space, I think we're a long ways from doing that yet, and I think we have many, many decades before we could be able to even consider something like that.

How do you fight someone smarter than yourself?' Rand Whispered. 'The answer is simple. You make her think that you are sitting down across the table from her, ready to play her game. Then you punch her in the face as hard as you can.

This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?