“I don’t know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.”

The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free?

I fear – as far as I can tell – that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?

A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.

Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones.

It’s all about long-term, sustaining relationships.

The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn’t started yet.

Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can’t criticize anything.

But Basic happened to be on a GE timesharing system that was done by Dartmouth, and when GE decided to franchise that, it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.

If you’re utopian, you’re never satisfied.

And when they decided to beef up their OSs, they went to (different) very old bad mainframe models of OS design to try to adapt to personal computers.

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points

Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.

I’m a very simple man. You’ve got to have, like, a computer nowadays to turn the TV on and off… and the nightmare continues.

Nowadays we can do computer experiments using Mathematica, and even solve a system of 42 equations. This offers another route to knowledge, rather than mere ideas.

Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone’s inside virtually going everywhere they want to go.

FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.

Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There’s more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it’s awfully close to human.

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

I don’t even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I’ve never used a computer.