There are two ways of constructing a piece of software: One is to make it so simple that there are obviously no errors, and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious errors.

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.

You find out more of the type of person someone is when they are around someone in need

Up here it seems we have only the stars, but even they seem small in the midst of that terrifying night sky...I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.

In Washington, the venerable were often vulnerable.

the voices of our ancestors telling of our glorious past, our culture, and what it means to be an Indian.

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

I desire that there be as many different persons in the world as possible; I would have each one be very careful to find out and preserve his own way.

Tehran believes it's none of our business or anybody else's to decide the future of personalities in other countries.

Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.

God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.