Original artwork, not a still
Disputed attribution: Grace Hopper
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'We've always done it this way.'
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The line has become shorthand for institutional inertia, and Hopper's career gives it weight: she pushed compilers and English-like programming when mainframe culture insisted on machine code. People quote it in agile talks and slides about legacy systems, usually in the neat superlative form that looks like a later polish of what she actually said.
Context reviewed
In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
Nobody has found Hopper saying these exact words. Quote Investigator's earliest strong match is a 1976 Computerworld interview that reports her saying the most dangerous phrase a data-processing manager can use is "We've always done it that way", a paraphrase rather than a verbatim line. In 1975 a Baltimore Sun profile described the clock over her desk that ran counter-clockwise, to remind people that doing things the old way was no reason against a better one. A 1987 compilation of her sayings has her calling humans allergic to change, and Wikiquote lists the "most dangerous phrase" form as an unsourced variant.
Sources (2)
- Quote Investigator: The Most Dangerous Phrase Is We've Always Done It That WayReply section, 1975, 1976 and 1987 citationsReference checked
- Wikiquote: Grace HopperThe Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)Reference checked
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