Donald Knuth

Scientist

1938-01-10

Quotes by 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• I currently use Ubuntu Linux, on a standalone laptop - it has no Internet connection. I occasionally carry flash memory drives between this machine and the Macs that I use for network surfing and graphics; but I trust my family jewels only to Linux.

  Read quote

• My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine.

  Read quote

• I am worried that algorithms are getting too prominent in the world. It started out that computer scientists were worried nobody was listening to us. Now I'm worried that too many people are listening.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• A list is only as strong as its weakest link.

  Read quote

• Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

  Read quote

• Email is a wonderful thing for those people whose role in life is to be on top of things, but not for me: my role is to be on the bottom of things.

  Read quote