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

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.

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.

Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.

By music minds an equal temper know, Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. . . . . Warriors she fires with animated sounds. Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.

The artist secretes nostalgia around life.

The purpose of leadership is not to make the present bearable. The purpose of leadership is to make the future possible.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.

I'm always listening and watching; my ear is like a boom mike. And judging, frankly. Constantly judging.

Warm water rebirthing has a tendency to regress people to birth memories and prenatal states of consciousness.

Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.

Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that's the truth in people's minds.

Anytime you spend six months on a song (Born to Run), there's something not exactly going right. A song should take about three hours.

My current companion, Gerard de Battista, is the father of my two sons.