Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes.

Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.

I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.

A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

I now have had my foggy crystal ball for quite a long time. Its predictions are invariably gloomy and usually correct, but I am quite used to that and they won't keep me from giving you a few suggestions, even if it is merely an exercise in futility whose only effect is to make you feel guilty.

In the software business there are many enterprises for which it is not clear that science can help them; that science should try is not clear either.

Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.