108 Quotes by Donald Knuth

Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed.

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.

The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires ‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of what people and animals do ‘without thinking.

Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

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.