Lisp causes you to think in different ways. It allows for metaprogramming in ways other languages don't allow. It is endlessly reconfigurable.
I've never heard this before. Modern C++ sure, but I thought most of the "modernization" in lisp was done in descendant languages (i.e. racket).
One core feature of any Lisp dialect is that you can extend the language using Lisp.
Thus, you don't need to "change" the language spec or write a new compiler to extend (and thus modernize) the language.
Lisp causes you to think in different ways. It allows for metaprogramming in ways other languages don't allow. It is endlessly reconfigurable.