Donald Knuth Quotes

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

A good technical writer, trying not to be obvious about it, but says everything twice: formally and informally. Or maybe three times.

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

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.

I am assuming that God exists and I am glad that there is no way to prove this. [Because] I would run through the proof once, and then I'd forget it, and I would never speculate about spiritual things and mysteries otherwise. And, I think, my life would be very incomplete.

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

The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

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

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.

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

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

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

If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.

Most people only know pi in decimal.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed.