Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think.

Congress is good at doing two things: one is nothing, and the other is overreacting.

If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas.

What's important is not just to develop the technology it's to develop the processes.

There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion.

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments.

A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a framework within which we organize our ideas about processes.

Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization.