Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.

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.

Just because you can't read doesn't make you dumb. It just means you haven't learned yet.

I try not to remember them but very often memories force themselves on my consciousness

Great men know how to control two things

Tell me I'm not crazy, " He said. I couldn't do that. I was nowhere near sane enough at the moment to advise anyone else on rational behavior.

During my completely soul-shredding midlife crisis at the age of twenty-eight, I felt sure I had peaked too soon.

Freedom is the atmosphere in which humanity thrives. Breathe it in.

When men know not what to do, they ought not to do they know not what

...consciousness is a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment.

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

What is there that is illustrious that is not also attended by labor?