[The Euclidean algorithm is] the granddaddy of all algorithms, because it is the oldest nontrivial algorithm that has survived to the present day.

Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do.

Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random

Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.

People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.

Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on each other, like a wall of mini stones.

The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

I'm a jacket man. And if I'm without one, I am kind of seriously disabled. I don't know how to operate in shirt sleeves.

We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.

I'm rarely invited to start-up parties, but who cares about their trinkets and apps anyway?

Some of the most rewarding times my brothers and I have are when all of us get together, and we can see what we've been building genetically and culturally.

I hate Valentine's day. It is a day for nothing but disappointment.

A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.

I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming. Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places.

family relationships have made me so ill!

Hardy thinks they're cheering for him. I'm not going to tell him differently.