The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

What are the important problems of your field?

Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes.

Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity. I don`t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on each other's feet!