Great results in science and engineering are "bunched" in the same person too often for success to be a matter of random luck. - Richard Hamming

The feeling of having free will is deep in us and we are reluctant to give it up for ourselves—but we are often willing to deny it to others!

In forming your plan for your future you need to distinguish three different questions: What is possible? What is likely to happen? What is desirable to have happen?

The only generally agreed upon definition of mathematics is "Mathematics is what mathematicians do." [...] In the face of this difficulty [of defining "computer science"] many people, including myself at times, feel that we should ignore the discussion and get on with doing it. But as George Forsythe points out so well in a recent article*, it does matter what people in Washington D.C. think computer science is. According to him, they tend to feel that it is a part of applied mathematics and therefore turn to the mathematicians for advice in the granting of funds. And it is not greatly different elsewhere; in both industry and the universities you can often still see traces of where computing first started, whether in electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or even business. Evidently the picture which people have of a subject can significantly affect its subsequent development. Therefore, although we cannot hope to settle the question definitively, we need frequently to examine and to air our views on what our subject is and should become.