The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.

The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.

Always remember, however, that there’s usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.

The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct.

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.

A list is only as strong as its weakest link.

The most important thing in the kitchen is the waste paper basket and it needs to be centrally located.