The future was and remains the quintessential American art form. Other nations sit back and let their futures happen; we construct ours. We can let the future happen, or take the trouble to imagine it. We can imagine it dark or bright - and in the long run, that's how it will be.

The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on.

Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify the design and construction of complex programs.

if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.

Computers make people stupid.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. ... The geniuses of the computer field, on the the other hand, are the people with the keenest aesthetic senses, the ones who are capable of creating beauty. Beauty is decisive at every level: the most important interfaces, the most important programming languages, the winning algorithms are the beautiful ones.

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.