Brainpower is by far our scarcest resource.

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.

Never compare your love story to those you watch in movies. They're written by scriptwriters, yours is written by God.

So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)

It has always been desirable to tell the truth, but seldom if ever necessary.

Whither am I going? To the New World. What to do? To gain honor? No, if I know my own heart. To get money? No: I am going to live to God, and to bring others so to do.

We are living at the beginning of the humanization of business.

I still feel that the kind of leader I want to be is one that spends time understanding our work in a way that allows me to translate it for policymakers and people who have real access to resources.

I think the big lesson to the political class is stop listening so much to each other, and start listening to the people.

My family is from Russia and Poland. We never had that thing with the German Jews.