[About PL/I] At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in… - Tony Hoare

[About Ada] For none of the evidence we have so far can inspire confidence that this language has avoided any of the problems that have afflicted other complex language projects of the past. [...] It is not too late! I believe that by careful pruning of the ADA language, it is still possible to select a very powerful subset that would be reliable and efficient in implementation and safe and economic in use.

[About Algol W] It was not only a worthy successor of ALGOL 60, it was even a worthy predecessor of PASCAL […] I was astonished when the working group, consisting of all the best known international experts of programming languages, resolved to lay aside the commissioned draft on which we had all been working and swallow a line with such an unattractive bait.

[About Algol 60] Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.