Grace Hoppe was a scientist and served in the United States Navy as a rear admiral. She made countless contributions to computer programming innovations. She was a pioneer as she theorized machine-independent programming languages.
grace hopper quotes about wisdom
This amazing woman also had a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University. She worked as a programmer on the Harvard Mark I computers which were used during the World War II.
- “A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”-Grace Hopper
2. “Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight that. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”-Grace Hopper
3. “The most damaging phrase in the language is: ‘It’s always been done that way.”-Grace Hopper
4. “We’re just getting started. We’re just beginning to meet what will be the future-we’ve got the Model T.”-Grace Hopper
5. “One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.”-Grace Hopper
6. “I’ve always been more interested in the future than in the past.”-Grace Hopper
7. “It is insufficient to plan on the past alone; the plan must be examined in the light of all possible future developments.”-Grace Hopper
8. “The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It’s simply larger than it needs to be.”-Grace Hopper
9. “If you do something once, people will call it an accident. If you do it twice, they call it a coincidence. But do it a third time and you’ve just proven a natural law!”-Grace Hopper
10. “The only phrase I’ve ever disliked is, ‘Why, we’ve always done it that way.’ I always tell young people, ‘Go ahead and do it. You can always apologize later.’”-Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper Revolutionary Leadership Quotes
Grace Hopper led a team in the CODASYL consortium to create a programming language that was not dependent on machines. After her retirement from the Navy she worked as a consultant sharing her knowledge of computers.
- “Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down. Respect for one’s superiors; care for one’s crew.”-Grace Hopper
2. “If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.”-Grace Hopper
3. “No innovation or standard should be rejected as too costly without careful evaluation of the cost of not doing it.”-Grace Hopper
4. “Even in a world of accelerating change, it is still difficult to convince people that the new ways of doing things can be better and cheaper.”-Grace Hopper
5. “If you want my ghost just say ‘ We’ve always done it that way.’ and i will haunt you for 24 hours.”-Grace Hopper
6. “At any given moment, there is always a line representing what your boss will believe. If you step over it, you will not get your budget. Go as close to that line as you can.”-Grace Hopper
7. “You don’t manage people, you manage things. You lead people.”-Grace Hopper
8. “People are not ‘well-behaved’ mathematical functions.”-Grace Hopper
9. “We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.”-Grace Hopper
10. “If it isn’t bolted down, bring it home.”-Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper Quotes about Life
She had attempted enlist in the Navy during the World War II but failed as she was 34 years old. But she was allowed to be a part of the Navy Reserves and she made use of the opportunity given to her and began working in the field of computer science.
- “I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, ‘What are you?'”-Grace Hopper
2. “I didn’t know what a billion was. I don’t think most of those men downtown know what a billion is, either. And if you don’t know what a billion is, how on earth do you know what a billionth is?”-Grace Hopper
3. “I seem to do a lot of retiring.”-Grace Hopper
4. “I’ve received many honors and I’m grateful for them; but I’ve already received the highest award I’ll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy.”-Grace Hopper
5. “I will not take what you need to give me. I will take what you want to give me.”-Grace Hopper
6. “I’m totally against women in combat, because we live in a culture and a society that imposes on every man the concept of women and children first…If you had a man and a woman trying to go through some dangerous woods, the man’s instinct would be to protect the woman. Therefore you weaken the man.”-Grace Hopper
7. “I’ve always objected to doing anything over again if I had already done it once.”-Grace Hopper
8. “There’s something you learn in your first boot-camp or training camp: If they put you down somewhere with nothing to do, go to sleep—you don’t know when you’ll get any more.”-Grace Hopper
9. “The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”-Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper Quotes about Computers and People
Although everyone around her told her it was impossible, she managed to make a compiler that converted English terms into machine codes. Thus, most of all she understood the importance of original thought and the value of human intellect.
- “Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me.”-Grace Hopper
2. “In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn’t budge a log, they didn’t try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn’t be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers.”-Grace Hopper
3. “They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”-Grace Hopper
4. “There sat that beautiful big machine whose sole job was to copy things and do addition. Why not make the computer do it? That’s why I sat down and wrote the first compiler. It was very stupid. What I did was watch myself put together a program and make the computer do what I did.”-Grace Hopper
5. “To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.”-Grace Hopper
6. “We’ve tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.”-Grace Hopper
7. “We’re flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We’ve tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question”-Grace Hopper
8. “From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.”-Grace Hopper
9. “Some day, on the corporate balance sheet, there will be an entry which reads, ‘Information;’ for in most cases, the information is more valuable than the hardware which processes it.”-Grace Hopper
10. “Developing a compiler was a logical move; but in matters like this, you don’t run against logic — you run against people who can’t change their minds.”-Grace Hopper
11. “Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.”-Grace Hopper
12. “No computer is ever going to ask a new, reasonable question. It takes trained people to do that”-Grace Hopper
13. “We do need to keep the records. But there isn’t any reason for printing them. The next generation growing up with computers will change that.”-Grace Hopper
14. “We must include in any language with which we hope to describe complex data-processing situations the capability for describing data.”-Grace Hopper
15. “I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. … they carefully told me, computers could only do arithmetic; they could not do programs.”-Grace Hopper
16. “Kids will be using computers instead of memorizing their multiplication tables. This will give them more time to solve word problems, which is much more useful.”-Grace Hopper
17. “Either you use computers or you can’t do the job.”-Grace Hopper
18. “Everyone wants better answers faster.”-Grace Hopper
19. “That’s the real problem. Not the arithmetic but the interpretation.”-Grace Hopper
