"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." - Alan Perlis
"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." - Eric Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"
"Like DNA, such a language [Lisp] does not go out of style." - Paul Graham, ANSI Common Lisp
"The problem with Lisp is that it makes you so damned smug." - Jesse Bowman
"...only the creatively intelligent can prosper in the Lisp world." - Richard Gabriel
"If someone asks me who I am, and if I'm among ordinary people, I tell them I'm a computer hacker. If I'm among computer people I tell them I'm a Unix hacker. If I'm among Unix people I tell them I'm a Linux hacker. And if I'm among Linux people I tell them I'm a Lisp hacker." - James Crippen
"Lisp is the red pill." - John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
"Lisp is so great ... because it is simply the most powerful language available. And the reason everyone doesn't use it is that programming languages are not merely technologies, but habits of mind as well, and nothing changes slower." - Paul Graham
"Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." - Phil Greenspun
"...the greatest single programming language ever designed." - Alan Kay (about Lisp)
"Lisp is a programmable programming language." - John Foderaro
"Will write code that writes code that writes code that writes code for money." - on comp.lang.lisp
"Because Lisp gives you the freedom to define your own operators, you can mold it into just the language you need. If you're writing a text-editor, you can turn Lisp into a language for writing text-editors. If you're writing a CAD program, you can turn Lisp into a language for writing CAD programs. And if you're not sure yet what kind of program you're writing, it's a safe bet to write it in Lisp. Whatever kind of program yours turns out to be, Lisp will, during the writing of it, have evolved into a language for writing that kind of program." - Paul Graham, On Lisp
"Lisp is an especially good language for writing extensible programs because it is itself an extensible program." - Paul Graham, On Lisp
"Lisp is a language for doing what you've been told is impossible." - Kent Pitman
"Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages." - Eric Raymond, Open Sources
"...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list." - Kent Pitman
"Java is the SUV of programming tools. A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl. People who are serious about getting the job done on time and under budget will use tools such as Visual Basic (controlled all the machines that decoded the human genome). But the programmers and managers using Java will feel good about themselves because they are using a tool that, in theory, has a lot of power for handling problems of tremendous complexity. Just like the suburbanite who drives his SUV to the 7-11 on a paved road but feels good because in theory he could climb a 45-degree dirt slope. If a programmer is attacking a truly difficult problem he or she will generally have to use a language with systems programming and dynamic type extension capability, such as Lisp." - Philip Greenspun
"I had a second ephiphany for the week... Believing that Lisp circa 1982 plus some mid-1980s ML tricks thrown in is better than all of the new programming tools (C#, Java) that have been built since then is sort of like being a Holocaust denier." - Philip Greenspun