By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend — Donald Knuth

"The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues."

"If you find that youre spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that youre spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice."

"In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the TEX project is that software is hard. It’s harder than anything else I’ve ever had to do."

"The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesnt make its motion random."

"To summarize: We have seen that computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better. Therefore we can be glad that people who lecture at computer conferences speak of the state of the Art."

"Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science..."