For the last one: Lisps (in general) have a history/tradition/perception of being innovative and pushing the boundaries of language, for better or for worse. For modern examples, Scheme was arguably more guided by aesthetic principles than pragmatic ones, and Clojure is an exploration of immutable structures and concurrency. Many lisps were highly experimental pet projects, and associated with academic research rather than industrial applications. They were also commonly descibed as "elegant," where the "art" part of the quote comes from.<p>Common Lisp is notable among lisps for breaking this tradition. It was meant to be industrial-strength, which goes for robustness and completeness at the expense of elegance, and rather than innovation merely contains a lowest-common-denominator mix of (then-)standard lisp capabilities. In short, Common Lisp is the most Worse-Is-Better of any lisp dialect, putting practicality ahead of being really slick.<p>The quote ascribes this to CL being designed by committee, rather than being designed by eccentric (or straight-up batshit crazy) enthusiasts the way that lisps have been historically. While this certainly relates to its lowest-common-denominator look &#38; feel, I would argue the language's design goals already set it down that path when it was the pet project of Steele &#38; friends, even before it became a literal committee product. One could quip that Steele dragged C half-way to lisp and got Java, and then dragged lisp half-way to Java and got Common Lisp.