UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd.

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.

I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.

At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler.

C is peculiar in a lot of ways, but it, like many other successful things, has a certain unity of approach that stems from development in a small group.

The visible things that have come from the group have been the Plan 9 system and Inferno, but I hasten to say that the ideas and the work have come from colleagues.

I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things.

Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9.

C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.

C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new.

Over the past several years, I've been more in a managerial role.

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson.

The kind of programming that C provides will probably remain similar absolutely or slowly decline in usage, but relatively, JavaScript or its variants, or XML, will continue to become more central.

I've done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time.

A new release of Plan 9 happened in June, and at about the same time a new release of the Inferno system, which began here, was announced by Vita Nuova.

I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate.

I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up.

At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being - well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school.

One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Doorman - a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

Churchill was one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to know that each thinks the other is overrated.

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.

The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others.

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations.

I am the farthest thing from a computer genius.

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.