200 Quotes by Finnish authors

Finnish wisdom tends to speak softly and carry granite: spare words, steady humor, and the stubborn spark of sisu. Sayings grow out of peatland and pine, where silence is a form of speech and weather is a companion, not a complaint. Light and darkness trade custody of the year, giving voice to both tender melancholy and clear-eyed pragmatism. Affection hides in understatement, community in shared labor, solace in sauna and lake water. Here, truth is hewn clean, like ice cut for winter storage.

See the complete list of authors from Finland

"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"My name is Linus, and I am your God"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together"

Alvar Aalto, Architect

"There are lots of Linux users who don't care how the kernel works, but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"Any program is only as good as it is useful"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"Men and women have roles - their roles are different, but their rights are equal"

Harri Holkeri, Politician

"Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"What commercialism has brought into Linux has been the incentive to make a good distribution that is easy to use and that has all the packaging issues worked out"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"Non-technical questions sometimes don't have an answer at all"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see it, the more it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find anything technically interesting there"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict"

Harri Holkeri, Politician

"I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds"

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Musician

"Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect"

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Musician

"Transnational, gigantic industrial companies no longer operate within political systems, but rather above them"

Georg Henrik von Wright, Philosopher

"Mind is everything. Muscle - pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind"

Paavo Nurmi, Athlete

"In many cases, the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"I never felt that the naming issue was all that important, but I was obviously wrong, judging by how many people felt. I tell people to call it just plain Linux and nothing more"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city"

Alvar Aalto, Architect

"Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art"

Alvar Aalto, Architect

"In Finland we have equal political rights for women and men. We do not regard ourselves according to sex"

Harri Holkeri, Politician

"Some genres I'm not a huge fan of but there are always exceptions that break the rules. There are always a few people doing it in a way weird enough to grab my attention"

Ville Valo, Musician

Small: Ville Valo

"Art is always criticized and always an outsider gets the blame"

Ville Valo, Musician

Small: Ville Valo

"I've got asthma. When I was 17 I forgot to take my medication and was taken to a hospital for almost two weeks. After that I've taken better care of my illness"

Ville Valo, Musician

Small: Ville Valo

"Hopefully it will be possible to get all our other albums in American shops one day so if people are interested they can hear it but I'm hoping that people are going to be interested in what we are going to do, not just what we've done"

Ville Valo, Musician

Small: Ville Valo

"We started playing music from an early age and so we wasn't really aware of that side of it, the weird thing is the more successful you get the more free booze and drugs you get, they should be given to the bands who don't have the money"

Ville Valo, Musician

Small: Ville Valo

"The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster"

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Musician

"So foolish is the heart of man that he ever puts his hope in the future, learning nothing from his past errors and fancying that tomorrow must be better than today"

Mika Waltari, Author

"A decision once taken brings peace to a man's mind and eases his soul"

Mika Waltari, Author

"So much is man the slave of his heart that he will shut his eyes to what does not please him and believe all that he hopes"

Mika Waltari, Author

"Under-representation of women and other inequality among researchers is a problem that will not solve itself as women acquire competence"

Tarja Halonen, Statesman

"It is people who are the objects of globalization and at the same time its subjects. What also follows logically from this is that globalization is not a law of nature, but rather a process set in train by people"

Tarja Halonen, Statesman

"Do you have any ambitions outside racing? My main ambition at the moment, whether inside or outside racing, is to become Formula 1 World Champion"

Kimi Raikkonen, Celebrity

"Linux has definitely made a lot of sense even in a purely materialistic sense"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

"I don't expect to go hungry if I decide to leave the University. Resume: Linux looks pretty good in many places"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Small: Linus Torvalds

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