“Dealing with failure is easy.”

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

“Toward what end, toward what end?”- but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.

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

Optimization hinders evolution.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else.

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

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.

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.

Habits are like comfortable beds. They are easy to get into, but difficult to get out of.

I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

A spiritually established life is not an easy task. But a materially satisfied life is an impossible task.

One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily.

It’s so easy to focus on what could go wrong, on what else you could do before you try the thing you really want to do. No. Just get out there and try.

Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.

The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.