Grace Hopper

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It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (9 December 1906 – 1 January 1992) U.S. Naval officer, and an early computer programmer; developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language.

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From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.
- On the removal of a 2-inch-long moth from the Harvard Mark I experimental computer at Harvard in August 1945, as quoted in Time (16 April 1984)

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.
- Sloan School of Management (1962). Management and the Computer of the Future, p. 277, Wiley.

A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.
- Tropp, Henry S. (Fall 1984). "Grace Hopper: The Youthful Teacher of Us All". Abacus 2 (1): p. 18. ISSN 0724-6722.

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
- As quoted in U.S. Navy's Chips Ahoy magazine (July 1986)

I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, "What are you?"
- On being the oldest active-duty officer in the U.S. military, in an interview on 60 Minutes (24 August 1986)

In total desperation, I called over to the engineering building, and I said, "Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me."
- On demonstrating a billionth of a second of electricity travel with a piece of wire, in an interview on 60 Minutes|60 Minutes (24 August 1986)

At the end of about a week, I called back and said, "I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?"
- On demonstrating a billionth of a second of electricity travel with a piece of wire, in an interview on 60 Minutes|60 Minutes (24 August 1986)

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
- (March/April 1987). "The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper". OCLC Newsletter (167). ISSN 0163-898X.

I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. […] they carefully told me, computers could only do arithmetic; they could not do programs.
- Billings, Charlene W. (1989). Grace Hopper: Navy Admiral and Computer Pioneer, p. 74, Enslow. ISBN 089490194X.

[edit] Unsourced

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

I've always been more interested in the future than in the past.

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
- Possibly quoted in Computer Networks, 1st. ed (1981), by Andrew Tanenbaum, p. 168, without attribution.
- Explicitly attributed (without source) in The UNIX-HATERS Handbook (1994), by Simon Garfinkel, Daniel Weise, Steven Strassmann (editors), p. 9.