In an interview at http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=273 Alan Kay said something I really liked, and I think it applies equally well to Python as well as the languages mentioned:
I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style. Languages such as APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are what you might call style languages, where there's a real center and imputed style to how you're supposed to do everything. I think that "a crystallization of style" sums things up nicely. The rest of the interview is pretty interesting as well. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Look!! Karl Malden! at visi.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list