The very fact that it's possible to write messy programs in Perl is
also what makes it possible to write programs that are cleaner in Perl
than they could ever be in a language that attempts to enforce
cleanliness. The potential for greater good goes right along with the
potential for greater evil.
-- Larry Wall
Quoted in "Why Michael Schwern is
not a Java programmer" by Simon Cozens Jul. 11, 2001
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/461