From: anonymous

"...In the UNIX world, people tend to interpret `non-technical user'
as meaning someone who's only ever written one device driver."
--- Daniel Pead
From: "Alan Batie"

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo "You live"
From: http://www.byte.com/art/9601/sec13/art1.htm

Years ago, I told the VP of marketing at AT&T that if they bought
KFC, they'd end up advertising hot, dead chicken. He sighed and said,
"The worst of it is that we'd probably advertise warm, dead chicken."
From: "Brad Brown"

rm -rf /bin/laden
force the recursive removal of bin laden.
This would include himself, as well as all of his subordinates

chmod a+x /bin/laden
allow anyone the permission to execute bin laden
From: anonymous

You don't pull on Superman's cape. You don't pee into the wind.
And you don't store anything in a file named "core".
From: http://slashdot.org/bsd/01/05/30/124255.shtml

"software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be
they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including
modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching
machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia."
From: David

Confucius say: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
From: Ken Pier of Xerox PARC

"I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as
an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is
intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies,
you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable
diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell,
this is simply the natural condition and they live within it.
By the time they find out differently, it is too late.
They already think that the writing of shell scripts is
a natural act."
From: Simon Cozens

As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know its true name.
From: Beckman

UNIX--Not just another OS...An Attitude.
From: Marcus Rist

The UNIX Guru's View of Sex:
# unzip ; strip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; umount ; sleep
From: Peter Skliarouk

Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity.
From: Heather Garvey

"It used to be said [...] that AIX looks like one space alien
discovered Unix, and described it to another different space alien
who then implemented AIX. But their universal translators were
broken and they'd had to gesture a lot."
From: Tom Christiansen

"Most Non-Unix managers conclude that VI is either extraterrestrial
in origin or was devised by the original Unix developers as part of a
secret communication code to reach another dimension."
From: Guillaume dubun

"...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT
(also known as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)."
From: Veteran of the Psychic Wars

"...to raise a signal means to turn the light on; ... Responding to a
signal means turning the light off (and, under System V, hoping the
bulb won't blow when it's next turned on)..."
From: anonymous

In 1984 mainstream users were choosing VMS over UNIX. Ten years later
they are choosing Windows over UNIX. What part of that message aren't
you getting?
From: Joel J. Hanes

"What will happen when the 32-bit Unix date goes negative
in mid-January 2038 does not bear thinking about."
From: Tom Christiansen

This is the typical life of any Unix administrator. Most user/system
problems tend to read just like detective novels. Sometimes we win,
sometimes we reboot.

From: Tom Christiansen

"... the whole documentation is not unreasonably transportable in a
student's briefcase."
"This has since been fixed in recent versions."
From: Ed Wright (0x0E2 UNIX The saga Never Ends)

I think I've got the hang of it now .... :w :q :wq :wq! ^d X exit ^X^C ~.
^[x X Q :quitbye CtrlAltDel ~~q :~q logout save/quit :!QUIT ^[zz ^[ZZ
ZZZZ ^H ^@ ^L ^[c $q ^# ^E ^X ^I ^T ? help helpquit ^D ^d ^C ^c help
^]q exit ?Quit ?q \qy \xyy F.M.H.! YMHAOS edw@sequent.COM KA9AHQ 28.340
From: JoSHua Lehan

He's a real UNIX man
Sitting in his UNIX land
Making all his UNIX .plans
For nobody
From: Marc WANDSCHNEIDER

"Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell bad."
From: Olli Vinberg

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
in kernel as it is in user!
From: Mark Buckaway

"UNIX and OS/2 are operating systems.
Windows is a shell, and DOS is an boot virus."
From: wd

UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things,
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.
From: Brett L. Huber

... Our continuing mission: To seek out knowledge of C, to explore
strange UNIX commands, and to boldly code where no one has man page 4.
From: Noahal A. Mundt

"A good magician never reveals his secret; the unbelievable trick
becomes simple and obvious once it is explained. So too with UNIX."
From: Timo M J Jantunen

The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
From: Pete Williams

MANIAC: Typical lines include:
alias rm 'rm -rf \!*'
alias hose kill -9 '`ps -augxww | grep \!* | awk \'{print $2}\'`'
alias kill 'kill -9 \!* ; kill -9 \!* ; kill -9 \!*'
alias renice 'echo Renice\? You must mean kill -9.; kill -9 \!*'
From: Fred Heald

"Beaten paths are for beaten men"
From: Steven King, Software Archaeologist

Unix is user-friendly.
It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with.
From: Gallandro

"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program. You will never find a more
wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
From: David B. Thomas

Will hack Unix for food.
From: Matthias Urlichs

"VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use Unix."
From: Adam Thompson

UNIX -- where you can do anything in two keystrokes, or less...
From: Frank E Sweetser

Unix Wizard, (n):
Someone who can type `cat > /unix` and get away with it!
From: Tom Christiansen

Can you sum up plan 9 in layman's terms?
It does everything Unix does only less reliably.
From: Tony Clem

"Sendmail is the sort of tool that gave UNIX its bad reputation.
It is badly designed, its documentation is completely obtuse,
and it is absolutely essential."
From: H.P. Heidinger

UNIX is a trademark of AT&T ...
AT&T is a modem test command .... :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

File names are infinite in length where infinity is set
to 255 characters.
From: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001-15/0813.html

Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from
now until the time_t's wrap around.
This appears as a comment in the manual page for tunefs:
You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish.

Thanks to pimlott@idiomtech.com for pointing this out.
From: Ryan A Whelan (Staff)

Unix and the World Unixes with you. Vax and you Vax ALONE!

Other quotes