Hal Abelson Quotes

Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement

In the Middle Ages people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater than any individual person could do and the society would kind of revel in that. We don't do that as much anymore, but in a sense this is kind of like building a cathedral.

Anything which uses science as part of its name isn't: political science, creation science, computer science.

"What’s important is not just to develop the technology; it’s to develop the processes."

"Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization."

"Giving it away helps defuse complex intellectual property issues of ownership and control that can distract the universities from their missions to disseminate knowledge." - commmenting on MIT's Open Courseware program

"It is not that there is some magic technology. It is what are you going to do with it?"