Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

Any noun can be verbed.

We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.

When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.