The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure t — Programming

"There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works."

"No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience, the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved."

"On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

"Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle."

"To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge."

"Computer programs are the most intricate, delicately balanced and finely interwoven of all the products of human industry to date. They are machines with far more moving parts than any engine: the parts dont wear out, but they interact and rub up against one another in ways the programmers themselves cannot predict."

"The world and life are one. (5.621)"

"I want to make my own life a masterpiece."

"Oh, fame is as the moon above, Whose sun of light and life is love. There is more in the smile of one gentle eye Then the thousand pages of history; Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise. Take the gems in glorys coronal, And one smile of beauty is worth them all.—"

"Life is a compromise between fate and free will."

"The past is the poets,—that world is his own; Thence hath his music its truth and its tone. He calls up the shadows of ages long fled, And light, as life lovely, illumines the dead."

"I dont care what people think. This is my life. I know who I am. I stood up for my rights and my life."