Donald Knuth Quotes
"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Language, Name, Now, Programming, Succeed, Will)
"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."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Machines, Night, Sleep, Today)
"There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency."
- Donald Knuth
"The manuals we got from IBM would show examples of programs and I knew I could do a heck of a lot better than that. So I thought I might have some talent."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Talent, Thought)
"A list is only as strong as its weakest link."
- Donald Knuth
"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Art, Science, Computer)
"An algorithm must be seen to be believed."
- Donald Knuth
"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 eachother, like a wall of mini stones."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Art, Science, People, Computer, Reality)
"Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Change, Attitude, Computer, Want)
"In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Computer, Fact, Scientists, Want)
"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Will)
"I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Science, People, Computer, Living)
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Bugs)
"God is a challenge because there is no proof of his existence and therefore the search must continue."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: God, Challenge, Existence, Proof)