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

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.

An ultimate joint challenge for the biological and the computational sciences is the understanding of the mechanisms of the human brain, and its relationship with the human mind.

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

If everything is possible, then it is also possible that something is impossible.

If you dare ask questions, you will find the answers.

Mike took a deep breath and locked all his muscles in place, so he didn’t follow her. His fingers tingled where he had touched her skin, it was so soft, he’d never felt anything as soft.

Generation is the Important factor, of the Growth of Ideas.

Something like riding a horse - which I've recently started doing - requires courage, especially for me, as I started out being actually scared of horses.

Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.

Nerdighters make me believe in America again.

We should never listen to our feelings. They lead us astray.