Donald Knuth

"I believe that dreams give us direction and purpose."

"The real success is doing what you believe is right."

"I think that relationships are what make life meaningful."

"I believe that patience and persistence will always prevail."

"The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil."

"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else."

"The most important principle for the safety of programming is to refuse to allow the disorderly management of data."

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."

"The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places."

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

"The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others."

"Luck is believing you're lucky."

"An algorithm must be seen to be believed."

"The most important principle for the safety of programming is to refuse to allow the disorderly management of information."

"We should forget about small efficiencies, about 97% of the time; premature optimization is the root of all evil."

"Practice and experiment are essential to learning."

"I define genuine interactive computing as the practice of using computers to help human beings solve real problems."

"Coding is easy; design is hard."

"The greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more."

"Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope."

"Literate programming is a methodology that combines a programming language with a documentation language."

"I try to learn something new every day."

"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive because it can be used to show concretely the real thinking process."

"Different authors like different things, different readers like different things."

"The title of the series is The Art of Computer Programming, and the title of Volume 1 is Fundamental Algorithms."

"Giving is more fun than receiving because it keeps you from wanting things so much."

"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy."

"The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency."

"Computers are useless without humans to give them purpose."