“Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.”

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

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

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.

You think you KNOW when you learn.

Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.

Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.

A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

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

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

Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

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.

Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.

A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

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

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups – development, testing, marketing, user education.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn’t just skills like computer technology. It’s the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.

The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.

Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

If patterns of ones and zeros were ‘like’ patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?

Someday it’ll all be done by machine. Information machines.

I got my computer. The great thing about the computer is that you only need enough money to buy a computer and some food, and you’re all right. I don’t have to go to premières.