"In programming, everything we do is a special case of something more general -- and often we know it too quickly."

"Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth."

"I am a hard-core believer that the clean desktop is the way to go... At the same time, we told OEMs that if they were going to put a bunch of icons on the desktop, then so were we."

"Software is under a constant tension. Being symbolic it is arbitrarily perfectible; but also it is arbitrarily changeable."

"It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins."

"The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability."

"Computers have lots of memory but no imagination."

"The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life."

"People keep asking me what I think of it now that it's done. Hence my protest: The Web is not done!"

"When we first started, we would message all the time, ... He would log on, and mostly we would just message back and forth at the beginning of the relationship. Now, we use the computer, phones, letters, airlines - everything."

"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window."

"Advances in computer technology and the Internet have changed the way America works, learns, and communicates. The Internet has become an integral part of America's economic, political, and social life."

"Every day were saying, 'How can we keep this customer happy?' How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don't, somebody else will."

"A program without a loop and a structured variable isn't worth writing."

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards."

"Over time, it's becoming more and more understood by people that we're acting in their interests. And that's a very, very powerful thing for our brand."

"I think Microsoft named .Net so it wouldn’t show up in a Unix directory listing."

"A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant."

"MS-DOS, an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern kitchen appliances would sneer at."

"Anyone who spends their life on a computer is pretty unusual."

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

"If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, ‘We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more."

"We will never become a truly paper-less society until the Palm Pilot folks come out with WipeMe 1.0."

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

"C++ : Where friends have access to your private members."

"The "Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it."

"There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network."

"Ooops. My brain just hit a bad sector."

"This is not a phone business. This is the smallest video camera, it's the smallest computer, smallest TV."

"E-mail — When it absolutely, positively has to get lost at the speed of light."

"[Smart] is an elusive concept. There's a certain sharpness, an ability to absorb new facts. To ask an insightful question. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective."

"A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages."

"It is not a language's weakness but its strengths that control the gradient of its change: Alas, a language never escapes its embryonic sac."

"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."

"There is no programming language–no matter how structured–that will prevent programmers from making bad programs."

"Technology is the drug of choice for most Americans. Source unknown Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you."

"Los Angeles County officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms 'master' and 'slave' regarding computer hard drives, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive. Additionally, the term 'e-mail' will now be called 'e-person letter', 'dumb…"

"It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one."

"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment."

"Wherever there is modularity there is the potential for misunderstanding: Hiding information implies a need to check communication."

"Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught not to. So it is with great programmers."

"I remember turning in my first assignment in elementary school using the computer and the teachers were kind of confused that I had printed it."

"Software companies should take more responsibility for security holes, especially in browsers and e-mail clients. There are some straightforward things the industry should be doing right now to fix things, and I don't know why they haven't been done yet."

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why ? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on…"

"Computation has made the tree flower."

"There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’."

"A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before."

"I have an almost religious zeal.. not for technology per se, but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up."