Good teachers deserve apples; great teachers deserve chocolate. A favorite quotation, written in calligraphy on his office door.

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.

If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.

Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on each other's feet!

The most dangerous thought you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.

Typing is no substitute for thinking.

Mathematics is not merely an idle art form, it is an essential part of our society.

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.

You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.

Your attitude is your greatest capital in life.

Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks.

Delete, delete, delete and at the end find the ‘core aspect of the design’

It's sad when you think about it, but also kind of beautiful.

While I've lived in cities for most of my adult life, I really prefer the quiet, boring, mundanity of the country. It's the best place for me to work, think, and invent.

No one should be afraid to be themselves.

Nothing degrades a man do more than the allowed stoop so low as to hate someone

The apprentice realist uses line as a net to capture his prey, an imitation of reality. But soon he becomes enchanted with line as a thing. It becomes a servant of his pleasure.

Road rage is the expression of the amateur sociopath in all of us, cured by running into a professional.

Anybody that's got a problem with me is probably envious or wants to be me, and that's how I've always looked at it.