Thanks to the greatly improved possibility of communication, we overrate its importance. Even stronger, we underrate the importance of isolation.

The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.

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

The prisoner falls in love with his chains.

Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.

Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved forward.

The use of anthropomorphic terminology forces you linguistically to adopt an operational view. And it makes it practically impossible to argue about programs independently of their being executed.