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Computers Quotes

53 quotes about computers. Every quote shows where it comes from and how far to trust it.

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Most quoted on computers:

Software engineering is the part of computer science which is too difficult for the computer scientist.

Friedrich Bauer Bauer (1971)

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

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

Fred Brooks

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Richard Hamming Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (1962)

The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.

Konrad Zuse

Computer science is neither mathematics nor electrical engineering.

Alan Perlis

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

Donald Knuth

An adversary capable of implanting the right virus or accessing the right terminal can cause massive damage.

George Tenet

A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games.

Eugene Jarvis

"So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him.

Neil Gaiman

Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.

David Wheeler

The Analytical Engine has no pretentions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.

Ada Lovelace

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 Norman The Design of Everyday Things (1988)

What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger.

Frank Herbert God Emperor of Dune (1981)

If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.

Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker (1986)

I can’t be as confident about computer science as I can about biology. Biology easily has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. It’s at that level.

Donald Knuth Computer Literacy Bookshops Interview Computer Literacy Bookshops Interview (1993)

Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

Tim Berners-Lee

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.

Michael Crichton Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)

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