32 Quotes by Grace Murray Hopper

You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership.

I am now going to make you a gift that will stay with you the rest of your life. For the rest of your life, every time you say, “We’ve always done it that way,” my ghost will appear and haunt you for twenty-four hours.

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologise than it is to get permission.

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!

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.

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.’

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It’s simply larger than it needs to be. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.

It’s always easier to apologize for something you’ve already done than to get approval for it in advance.