The job of formal methods is to elucidate the assumptions upon which formal correctness depends.

Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965.

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.

The real value of tests is not that they detect bugs in the code but that they detect inadequacies in the methods, concentration, and skills of those who design and produce the code.

Some problems are better evaded than solved.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.

You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.

Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really gets resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that.

The great and the mighty that use their assets and power to subjugate people are demonstrating oppression.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

It's not that Good doesn't triumph over Evil, it's that the point spread is too small.

The nobly born must nobly meet his fate.

Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.

In war the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of the offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.

Silver is less valuable than gold, gold than virtue. [Lat., Vilius argentum est auro virtutibus aurum.]

A lot of girls walk this earth telling people they've slept with me. And a lot of them did. But I don't remember 95 percent of them.

Boredom is the beginning of all destruction and everything that is negative.