Computer Quotations

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-Alan Perlis

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
-Andy Rooney (1919 - )

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
-Bill Gates (1955 - ), Business @ The Speed of Thought

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.
-Bradley's Bromide

Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
-Clifford Stoll

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
-Doug Larson

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-E. W. Dijkstra

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
-Edward Shepherd Mead

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
-Farmers' Almanac, 1978

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.
-James Magary

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
-Jef Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal

The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little.
-Joe Martin, Porterfield

One would think that if you're anonymous, you'd do anything you want, but groups have their own sense of community and what we can do.
-John Allen, A network called 'Internet', CBC, 10-08-93

In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear.
-John C. Dvorak

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
-Ken Olsen (1926 - ), President, Digital Equipment, 1977

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-Nathaniel Borenstein (1957 - )

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

The computer is a moron.
-Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005)

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
-Pierre Gallois

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
-Robert Orben

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
-Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
-Stephen Hawking (1942 - )

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
-Unknown

In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it.
-Unknown

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
-unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949