In their capacity as a tool, computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind.

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.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one.

Friendship is a precious thing, Sayuri. One mustn't throw it away.

Tourism has affected Cuba, because tourists come and they bring racist, sexist ideas. They bring a whole vision that there are rich people all over the world and that's the way it should be.

I do not believe one can experience conversion or the fullness of the Christian life apart from the church.

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates.

We are with you in this work. Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power.

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

Architect: Someone who knows the difference between that which could be done and that which should be done.

There never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel.

If a thousand shares of stocks or bonds make nothing, you pay nothing. But on a thousand acres of land you pay enough to support half the community who own no land and pay no taxes.