Linus Torvalds

"I view Linux as something that I do for the fun of it."

"Everybody should have the opportunity to do what they love."

"People will hate you, rate you, shake you, and break you. But how strong you stand is what makes you."

"The quality of a person's life is determined by the quality of the questions they ask themselves."

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."

"I still believe in innovation and evolution. The key is to be able to change things rapidly."

"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."

"My name may not be well known, but the kernel I created certainly is."

"Open source is about trust and transparency."

"You can never be too paranoid when dealing with kernel code."

"In God we trust. All others must submit an X.509 certificate."

"The future of computing is distributed. Nobody owns it. It belongs to everyone."

"What's the worst that could happen? People might use the code I wrote."

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended."

"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from."

"A good programming language helps to write well-structured programs clearly."

"I tend to do the right thing without thinking about it much."

"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code."

"Any person can criticize, condemn, and complain - most people do. But it takes character to do nothing."

"The main rule of any technology used in a business is that the technology you use to ferguson the profits is never revenue."

"I'd rather have people think I'm incompetent than prove it."

"Very few people do anything that is totally unique. Most people do things that nobody has done before."

"The future of Linux is going to be number one. That's the way it should be."

"My engineering philosophy is to do exactly what is required, no more, no less."

"I'm a programmer. I like programming. Other people, not so much."

"The only way to make a lasting change is to truly care."

"Documentation is like sex. When it's good, it's very very good."

"If you want a really great kernel, you need a lot of volunteers."

"Avoid complexity. Most of the time complexity is not required."

"The real test of any technology is not whether it works, but whether it remains relevant."