160 Computers Quotes

Following is our list of computers quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about computer programming.

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Famous Computers Quotes

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. — Edsger Dijkstra

If we suppose that many natural phenomena are in effect computations, the study of computer science can tell us about the kinds of natural phenomena that can occur. — Rudy Rucker

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

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. — Eric S. Raymond

Science is supposedly the method by which we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. In computer science, we all are standing on each others' feet. — Gerald J. Popek

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. — Donald Knuth

Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline. — William J. Clinton

If you think about computer programming, it's as antisocial as it gets. — Shawn Fanning

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. - Nicholas Negroponte

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. — Nicholas Negroponte

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs. — Joseph Weizenbaum

Artificial intelligence should be renamed applied maths. — Lee Cronin

Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn — Stephen Hawking

Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs. — Seth Lloyd

Whether we're fighting climate change or going to space, everything is moved forward by computers, and we don't have enough people who can code — Richard Branson

Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn. — Steve Jobs

Short Computers Quotes

  • The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor. — Wernher Von Braun
  • Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. — John Von Neumann
  • A computer is like air conditioning - it becomes useless when you open Windows — Linus Torvalds
  • Learning is never done without errors and defeat. — Vladimir Lenin
  • A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. — Emo Philips
  • Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’ — Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Don't try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead. — Jackie Chan
  • The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. — Dennis Ritchie
  • Java is C++ without the guns, clubs and knives. — James Gosling
  • My computer beat me at checkers, but I sure beat it at kickboxing. — Emo Philips

Computers Image Quotes

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. - Pablo Picasso quote

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. — Pablo Picasso

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer. - Paul R. Ehrlich quote

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer. — Paul R. Ehrlich

I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. - Kent Beck quote

I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. — Kent Beck

A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules. - Rudy Rucker quote

A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules. — Rudy Rucker

Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking. - Milton Glaser quote

Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking. — Milton Glaser

Computations are everywhere, once you begin to look at things in a certain way. - Rudy Rucker quote

Computations are everywhere, once you begin to look at things in a certain way. — Rudy Rucker

Engineers Day Quotes

I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine. — Kurt Vonnegut

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. — Bruce Mau

YouTube is, at the end of the day, a search engine... that's why Google bought it. — Jake Paul

Let perseverance be your engine and hope your fuel. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

In the early days it was fun to fly. You could soar over rooftops and trees, or drop down to meet a passing train and wave at the engineer. The whole sky belonged to you. now there are so many regulations. The sky is crowded. All the fun is gone. — Katherine Stinson

However, the occasional visit of success provides just the excitement an engineer needs to face work the following day. — Koichi Tanaka

There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the entrepreneur into the creative economy. — John Baldacci

I was Chairman for two days. I had an airplane with my engines, hit a building I insured, was covered by a network I owned and I still have to increase earnings by 11 percent. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

What appears to be the established order of present-day civilization is actually only the inert but spectacular momentum of a high velocity vehicle whose engine has already stopped functioning. — Jose Arguelles

Everyone told me you can't build a major tech company in Canada. There just aren't enough investors or engineers or top-level managers. Each day, I'm driven to prove them wrong. — Ryan Holmes

Computer Programming Quotes

Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program. — Linus Torvalds

When I was nine, ten, I was super young, but I installed a program on my computer so I could start producing music. — Martin Garrix

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. — Edsger Dijkstra

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off. — Bjarne Stroustrup

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. — Brian Kernighan

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. — Henry Petroski

It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. — Albert Einstein

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. — Edsger Dijkstra

Talk is cheap. Show me the code. - Linus Torvalds

Talk is cheap. Show me the code. — Linus Torvalds

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. — Martin Fowler

Computer Technology Quotes

From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it. — Grace Hopper

What amplifies the transformational power ahead is the confluence of two major technological currents today: the universal access to mobile computing and the pervasive use of social networks. — Michael Saylor

The computer is the most extraordinary of man's technological clothing; it's an extension of our central nervous system. Beside it, the wheel is a mere hula-hoop. — Marshall McLuhan

There can be infinite uses of the computer and of new age technology, but if teachers themselves are not able to bring it into the classroom and make it work, then it fails. — Nancy Kassebaum

Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. — Bill Gates

We're in an inflection point where it's cheaper to learn to read on a tablet computer than it is to learn to read on paper. — Michael Saylor

Atlantis was a highly evolved civilization where the sciences and arts were far more advanced than one might guess. Atlantis was technologically advanced in genetic engineering, computer science, inter-dimensional physics, and artistically developed with electronic music and crystal art forms. — Frederick Lenz

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris. — Larry Wall

We know that with enough computer power and intelligence, the most complex of all encryptions can be decoded. — Mo Gawdat

I'm an enemy of what I call 'computer theology.' There's a class conflict out there. There's a techno-elite that lives in a different world. — Walt Mossberg

Computer Language Quotes

Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind. - Donald Knuth

Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind. — Donald Knuth

Code never lies, comments sometimes do. - Ron Jeffries

Code never lies, comments sometimes do. — Ron Jeffries

That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. — George Boole

Coding is today's language of creativity. All our children deserve a chance to become creators instead consumers of computer science. — Maria Klawe

When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code. — Richard E. Pattis

Language as the technology of human extension, whose powers of division and separation we know so well, may have been the "Tower of Babel" by which men sought to scale the highest heavens. Today computers hold out the promise of a means of instant tr — Marshall McLuhan

The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late. — Seymour Cray

I think it would be cool if you were writing a ransom note on your computer, if the paper clip popped up and said, 'Looks like you're writing a ransom note. Need help? You should use more forceful language, you'll get more money.' — Demetri Martin

Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction. — Donald A. Norman

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success. — Dennis Ritchie

Information Science Quotes

Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Science, as well as technology, will in the near and in the farther future increasingly turn from problems of intensity, substance, and energy, to problems of structure, organization, information, and control. — John Von Neumann

The antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences. — Jeremy Rifkin

I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information. — Irvine Welsh

Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors. — Edward Teller

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. — John Naisbitt

Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities-that's training or instruction-but is rather making visible what is hidden as a seed. — Thomas W. Moore

Macroeconomics, even with all of our computers and with all of our information - is not an exact science and is incapable of being an exact science. — Paul Samuelson

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..." — Carl Sagan

We need to substitute for the book a device that will make it easy to transmit information without transporting material. — J. C. R. Licklider

Computer Software Quotes

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software. — Greg Egan

It's hardware that makes a machine fast. It's software that makes a fast machine slow. — Craig Reucassel

The novice-friendly software is more like a misbehaving dog: it shits on the floor, it destroys things, and stinks - the novice-friendly software embodies the opposite of what computer people have dreamed of for decades: artificial stupidity. It's more human. — Erik Naggum

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more 'user-friendly'... Their best approach so far has been to take all the old brochures and stamp the words 'user-friendly' on the cover. — Bill Gates

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. - Niklaus Wirth

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. — Niklaus Wirth

If the genome were a computer, the epigenome would be the software. It instructs the newly divided cells on what type of cells they should be and what they should remain, sometimes for decades, as in the case of individual brain neurons and certain immune cells. — David Sinclair

This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended. — Wietse Venema

The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple. — Grady Booch

Hardware: where the people in your company's software section will tell you the problem is. Software: where the people in your company's hardware section will tell you the problem is. — Dave Barry

Good code is its own best documentation. As you're about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn't needed?" Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer. — Steve McConnell

Computer Graphics Quotes

You can't do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously. — Wim Crouwel

A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. — William Gibson

... the reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality. — Lev Manovich

My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts. — Jack Prelutsky

Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate. — Paul Rand

All problems in computer graphics can be solved with a matrix inversion. — Jim Blinn

There are about a dozen great computer graphics people and Jim Blinn is six of them. — Ivan Sutherland

I've always considered myself a graphic artists - a draftsman - as opposed to a typist. I do still work on a drawing table. At times drawing on a computer feels like I'm drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch. — Michael Schwab

My particular aesthetic of light and color and design wouldn't change as a result of working with computer graphics rather than with slit scan or miniatures. — Douglas Trumbull

It's possible to do computing in the Cloud, PlayStation 4 can do computing in the Cloud. We do something today: Matchmaking is done in the Cloud and it works very well. If we think about things that don't work well... Trying to boost the quality of the graphics, that won't work well in the Cloud. — Mark Cerny

Computer Games Quotes

The word 'geek' today does not mean what it used to mean. A geek isn't the skinny kid with a pocket protector and acne. There can be computer geeks, video game geeks, car geeks, military geeks, and sports geeks. Being a geek just means that you're passionate about something. — Olivia Munn

Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. — Kristen Wilson

Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers. — Naval Ravikant

Always trust computer games. — Ridley Pearson

Even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the "things" of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. "We give our children guns and computer games," Wendy said. "They gave their children the land." — Bruce Chatwin

Looking at virtual reality through computer screens, video game screens, and above all television screens is a denial of personality development. It's a denial of socialization, of expansion of vocabulary, of interaction with real human beings. — Ralph Nader

Video games and computers have become babysitters for kids. — Taylor Kitsch

Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter... Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven, just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation. — David Bohm

Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right? — Scott Mcnealy

I don't know why a computer game can't be an art form just as a puppet show or an opera is. I'm still interested in computer games as something I would like to work on someday. — Fred Saberhagen

Computer Systems Quotes

Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer and operate computer systems — Kevin Mitnick

Earth as a dynamical system is a really bad computer. A lot of information processing is concentrated in a few tiny compute nodes brains, chips with terrible interconnects, even as bad as use of physical translation and air pressure waves. And powered primitively by combustion. — Andrej Karpathy

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable. — Leslie Lamport

The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards. — Gene Spafford

If one ox could not do the job they did not try to grow a bigger ox, but used two oxen. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not to get a bigger computer, but . . .to build systems of computers and operate them in parallel. — Grace Hopper

All physical systems can be thought of as registering and processing information, and how one wishes to define computation will determine your view of what computation consists of. — Seth Lloyd

While many hackers have the knowledge, skills, and tools to attack computer systems, they generally lack the motivation to cause violence or severe economic or social harm. — Dorothy Denning

Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people. — Bruce Schneier

While many hackers have the knowledge, skills, and tools to attack computer systems, they generally lack the motivation to cause violence or severe economic or social harm. — Dorothy E. Denning

Computer scientists call validation: whereas verification asks 'Did I build the system right?', validation asks 'Did I build the right system?' — Max Tegmark

People Writing About Computers

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Read quotes by Donald Knuth

Donald Knuth
quotes on life, education and technology

68 681
Read quotes by Emo Philips

Emo Philips
quotes on life, love

204 3021
Read quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

Edsger Dijkstra
quotes on leadership, education and success

102 780
Read quotes by Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker
quotes on life, leadership and education

40 497
Read quotes by Eric S. Raymond

Eric S. Raymond
quotes on education, leadership and eric s raymond

61 438
Read quotes by William J. Clinton

William J. Clinton
quotes on leadership, education and constitution

650 2174

More Computers Quotes

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human. — Alan Turing

One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, "My little computer said such a funny thing this morning". — Alan Turing

No amount of outer technology, no amount of computers and biotechnology and nanotechnology is going to stop the continuation of warfare and racism and environmental destruction. What's called for on the Earth at this time is really a change of heart ... the question is really not the future of humanity, but the presence of eternity. — Jack Kornfield

Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred... Now is the time for you to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but grace. — Hafez

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village. — Thabo Mbeki

All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world? — James Hillman

This is a very exciting time in the world of information. It`s not just that the personal computer has come along as a great tool. The whole pace of business is moving faster. Globalization is forcing companies to do things in new ways. — Bill Gates

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers. — Lewis Thomas

Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems. A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail. — Jakob Nielsen

In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest. — Massimo Vignelli

Let's stick to the practical and the concrete: Would you like it if people lived in a virtual world? If machines were smarter than people? If, in the future, people, animals and plants were products of technology? If you don't like these ideas, then for you the computer and biological sciences clearly are dangerous. — Theodore Kaczynski

Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time. — J. G. Ballard

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway. — Bernard Avishai

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