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

Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.

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

What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?

Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

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

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.

In English every word can be verbed.

Dealing with failure is easy.

When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.

One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

Optimization hinders evolution.

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

I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.

Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.

That it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

Moral Education is the source of that spiritual equilibrium on which everything else depends and which may be compared to that physical equilibrium or sense of balance, without which it is impossible to stand upright or to move into any other position.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n’ roll – that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

I’m a Buffalo wing magnet, a sandwich fanatic, a cheesesteak guy. But I’ll only get a cheesesteak in Philadelphia. No one else does it right.

My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‘topics’ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.

There won’t be any hearsay. There won’t be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.