– Computer Proverbs –
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
~ Isaac Asimov
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
~ Emo Philips
Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.
~ Clifford Stoll
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
~ Edsger W. Dijkstra
The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.
~ Bill Gates
There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It’s a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you ‘play’ with them!
~ Richard P. Feynman
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
~ Joseph Campbell
Software is like entropy: It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases.
~ Norman Augustine
The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim.
~ Edsger W. Dijkstra
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
~ Sydney J. Harris
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
~ IBM Manual, 1925
User, n. The word computer professionals use when they mean “idiot.”
~ Dave Barry
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it’s done.
~ Scott Adams
Database: the information you lose when your memory crashes.
~ Dave Barry, Claw Your Way to the Top
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
~ Mitch Ratcliffe
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
~ One of Murphy’s Laws of Technology
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
~ John F. Kennedy
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft… and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
~ Werner von Braun
The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!
~ Richard Feynman
It’s hardware that makes a machine fast. It’s software that makes a fast machine slow.
~ Craig Bruce
Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
~ Doug Gwyn
Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity.
~ Dennis Ritchie
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
~ Pablo Picasso
Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container.
~ Nathan Myhrvold
Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
~ Alan Bennett
Physics is the universe’s operating system.
~ Steven R Garman
Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.
~ Nicholas Negroponte
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
