APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world's richest source of rewarding challenges.

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.

Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.

I write for ghosts

Before pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean.

Yes, I believe in God, but I don't perform a daily puja. I don't have any gurus. Ek baat hai,destiny, koi cheez hai.

I remain good friends with most of the major relationships in my life.

All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

[A difficult childhood gave me] a kind of cocky confidence. ... I could never have so little that I hadn't had less. It took away my fear.

Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.

Like most struggling writers trying to get their scripts commissioned, I had to do something odd to pay the rent. So, aged 21, I started up my own small cheesecake company in Philadelphia.