“Eiffel borrows quite openly from several earlier programming languages and I am sure that if we had found a good language construct in C we would have used it as well.”

Perfect reusable components are not obtained at the first shot.

C++ is the only current language making COBOL look good

Constants are widely known for the detestable practice of changing their values; we should prepare ourselves against the consequences of such fickleness

Ask not first what the system does; ask what it does it to!

Careful as they may be, developers of Eiffel libraries will always run into cases in which, after releasing a library class, they suddenly experience what in French is called esprit de l’escalier or wit of the staircase: a great thought which unfortunately is an afterthought.

Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification.

As Mr. Nagle so competently points out, almost no one uses Eiffel; in fact until recently there were only 9 users. But now a 10th person just started, so we are holding a conference, appropriately titled the TENTH Eiffel USER conference, to celebrate.

The role of a trainer or consultant is to empower the customer, not to make himself indispensable

I have always felt sympathy towards the biologists who accept to debate creationists. Now I also understand them better; one can fight opinions, not articles of faith.

I think Smalltalk is inappropriate for serious industrial developments. After all, run time is a little late to find out whether you have a landing gear.

Incorrect documentation is often worse than no documentation.

Writing a class without its contract would be similar to producing an engineering component (electrical circuit, VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chip, bridge, engine…) without a spec. No professional engineer would even consider the idea.

Correctness is clearly the prime quality. If a system does not do what it is supposed to do, then everything else about it matters little.

Like a clever reply that would have stunned all the other dinner guests – if only you had thought of it before walking down the stairs after the party is over

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive.

And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle – the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start?

But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis…

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire which is not to be found in all Gibbon ‘s immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.

…I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn’t have met, and who didn’t like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other.

But I have reasoned deeply, and, speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found without body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body.

When I think of civil liberties I think of the founding principles of the country. The freedoms that are in the First Amendment. But also the fundamental right to privacy.