Donald Knuth Short Quotes

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How can you own [...] numbers? Numbers belong to the world.

Donald Knuth
Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science...

Donald Knuth
Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random

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

Donald Knuth
I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.

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

Donald Knuth
The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate all need for intelligent thought.

Donald Knuth
A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.

Donald Knuth
I can't go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.

Donald Knuth
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

Donald Knuth
It's the idea that counts true; but we need a name for the idea, so we can apply it more easily next time.

Donald Knuth
Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.

Donald Knuth
The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.

Donald Knuth
Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been sorted with the help of a computer.

Donald Knuth
In this sense, we should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.

Donald Knuth
The whole thing that makes a mathematician's life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.

Donald Knuth
Always remember, however, that there's usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.

Donald Knuth
The difference between art and science is that science is what people understand well enough to explain to a computer. All else is art.

Donald Knuth
By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method; it is much closer to reality.

Donald Knuth
The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole.

Donald Knuth
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
Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don't fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it.

Donald Knuth
In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the TEX project is that software is hard. It's harder than anything else I've ever had to do.

Donald Knuth
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.

Donald Knuth
I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.

Donald Knuth