Donald Knuth Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• ...methods are more important than facts. The educational value of a problem given to a student depends mostly on how often the thought processes that are invoked to solve it will be helpful in later situations. It has little to do with how useful the answer to the problem may be. On the other hand, a good problem must also motivate the students; they should be interested in seeing the answer. Since students differ so greatly, I cannot expect everyone to like the problems that please me.

  Donald Knuth

  Educational, Learning, Hands

  28 Copy quote

• I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.

  Donald Knuth

  People, Trying, Study

  13 Copy quote

• I think people who write programs do have at least a glimmer of extra insight into the nature of God... because creating a program often means that you have to create a small universe

  Donald Knuth

  Inspirational, Writing, Mean

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Should Have, Ideas

  "MMIX 2009 a RISC computer for the third millennium". www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu.

  55 Copy quote

• The book Dynamic Programming by Richard Bellman is an important, pioneering work in which a group of problems is collected together at the end of some chapters under the heading "Exercises and Research Problems," with extremely trivial questions appearing in the midst of deep, unsolved problems. It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem."

  Donald Knuth

  Book, Exercise, Important

  27 Copy quote

• I currently use Ubuntu Linux, on a standalone laptop - it has no Internet connection. I occasionally carry flash memory drives between this machine and the Macs that I use for network surfing and graphics; but I trust my family jewels only to Linux.

  Donald Knuth

  Memories, Jewels, Ubuntu

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Reality, Understanding, Use

  Donald E. Knuth (1997). “The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms”, p.12, Addison-Wesley Professional

  17 Copy quote

• The best practice is inspired by theory.

  Donald Knuth

  Best Practices, Practice, Inspired

  4 Copy quote

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

  Donald Knuth

  Four, Three, Admiration

  Interview with Jack Woehr, Dr. Dobb's Journal, April 1996.

  40 Copy quote

• I have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Dna, Patents

  32 Copy quote

• Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science.

  Donald Knuth

  Tree, Computer, Computer Science

  Donald E. Knuth (2013). “Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 4,The: Generating All Trees--History of Combinatorial Generation”, p.2, Addison-Wesley Professional

  4 Copy quote

• My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine.

  Donald Knuth

  Writing, Style, Machines

  13 Copy quote

• Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

  Donald Knuth

  Change, Attitude, Learning

  "The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 3". Book by Donald Knuth, www.wired.com. 1973.

  16 Copy quote

• I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.

  Donald Knuth

  Order, Fonts, Restaurants

  "All Questions Answered". Notices of the AMS 49 (3), March 2002.

  27 Copy quote

• In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field.

  Donald Knuth

  Want, Fields, Facts

  33 Copy quote

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

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Technology, Mathematics

  "Digital Typography". Book by Donald Knuth, 1999.

  9 Copy quote

• The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.

  Donald Knuth

  Digital, Computer, Program

  Donald E. Knuth (1997). “The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms”, p.6, Addison-Wesley Professional

  22 Copy quote

• A list is only as strong as its weakest link.

  Donald Knuth

  Teamwork, Strong, Team Building

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Computer, Teach

  "Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, dl.acm.org. December 1974.

  7 Copy quote

• ... the designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. ... If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.

  Donald Knuth

  Writing, Design, Important

  7 Copy quote

• We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%

  Donald Knuth

  Opportunity, Roots, Evil

  23 Copy quote

• ...One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks.

  Donald Knuth

  Book, Writing, Learning

  12 Copy quote

• The most important thing in the kitchen is the waste paper basket and it needs to be centrally located.

  Donald Knuth

  Kitchen, Important, Needs

  10 Copy quote

• These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer.

  Donald Knuth

  Thinking, Common Sense, Trying

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1973). “The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental algorithms”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

  4 Copy quote

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

  Donald Knuth

  Numbers, World

  "Working on My Typesetting Program". www.webofstories.com.

  10 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin