Ada Lovelace

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

"I am much annoyed at your having altered my Note. You know I am always willing to make any required alterations myself, but that I cannot endure another person to meddle with my sentences."

"Ada, my dear child, be patient and persevering in your studies."

"The Analytical Engine might act upon other things besides number; were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed through abstract operations."

"I never am really satisfied with myself unless I am engaged in something that I can consider interesting and important."

"You will receive a visit from the Genius of Poesy."

"I believe the minds of the very young are particularly open to the influences of the beautiful and the true."

"I am a believer in the Oxford Movement—I revere all antiquity."

"The imaginative faculty is one of the most powerful tools we possess for understanding the universe."

"I have not the slightest pretension to write on any subject whatever that comes before the public eye."

"Mathematical knowledge is as essential to a full development of the mind as physical exercise is to the body."

"What is the Analytical Engine? It is the embodiment of the operations which man can conceive."

"I am inclined to believe that my chief difficulty has been a material, not a mental one."

"Your physical constitution requires an equally severe training as your mental one."

"I do not think I ever fell so completely in love before."

"I should not like to be the slave of the mathematical world."

"I hope to embody the Poetry of the Universe with Science."

"To say that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns is but little to say. It weaves all patterns which are capable of being expressed mathematically."

"I am much annoyed at your having altered my Note."

"The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific man have been struck out in conversation and hastily written down afterward on the slate."

"I have certainly had a most extraordinary life."

"The Analytical Engine will weave algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

"My own feeling is, that there is a vast field of research here to which no one has as yet applied the Analytical Engine."

"I maintain that the true and practical definition of an Analytical Engine is just this."

"I prefer the mathematics of computing to mere logic."

"The poetical view of things may be found to be of as much practical use in the world as the purely mathematical."

"I wish to add my mite towards expounding & interpreting the Almighty & his works."

"I love my studies with a fearless devotion."

"Do not suppose that my life has been that of an idle dreamer."

"I am a bit of an oddity in most people's way of thinking."