If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".

Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

One man's constant is another man's variable.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.

We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland'; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.

I did several interesting jobs, working in restaurants, I worked at a lab rat farm, feeding and watering all these rats. Then I got a full-time job as a technical writer for a large scientific research laboratory.

Everybody's family has different values.

Man seeks to change the foods available in nature to suit his tastes, thereby putting an end to the very essence of life contained in them.

When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.

I do the best I can when I'm accepting the role to say, 'This is about as much as I can do, and if that's not suitable for you, then you should hire somebody else.'

Well, I think he's right to notice that there is a difference in attitudes and even in the broadest sense of world view between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Which is old and which is new is an interesting question, and I almost think that maybe he's got it backwards.

I frequently dream of being on these horses' backs and running across a field. And the horse and I are one.

The enchanted day is only enchanted if we ourselves believe that anything is possible.

I still have nightmares about taking tests.

If we do not change our negative habits toward climate change, we can count on worldwide disruptions in food production, resulting in mass migration, refugee crises and increased conflict over scarce natural resources like water and farm land. This is a recipe for major security problems.

Truth is, every writer has to be a good editor, and you have to edit yourself. It's a skill every writer has to acquire.

Until youre grown up they send you to reform school. After youre grown up they send you to the penitentiary.

I know I didn't like that dress 'cause it didn't fit but I thought it was a great picture. We weren't the first band to do a picture in drag; The Rolling Stones were. If it was good enough for them then it had to be good enough for us.

Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer

Liberation is an interesting word, because you can be liberated from external things, and also from your internal dialogue.