Some consider the puzzles that are created by their omissions as spicy challenges, without which their texts would be boring; others shun clarity lest their work is considered trivial.

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world's richest source of rewarding challenges.

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.

Wherever I go, I meet myself.

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.

Adults are only obsolete children.

I think a lot of films do themselves a disfavor by putting in way too much information, and everyone knows what's gonna happen next, and no one can actually discover things as they go.

Scholarship can find little to say about the obvious.

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.

There was a pause - just long enough for an angel to pass, flying slowly.

If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

Texas is a great state. It's the 'Old Man River' of states. No matter who runs it or what happens to it politically, it just keeps rolling along!