The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-B. F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement

The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster.
-Adam Smith

I have always wished for a computer that would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish came true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
-Bjarne Stroustrup

If you don't know how to do something, you don't know how to do it with a computer.
-Source Unknown

Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons. Quoted in Popular Mechanics 1950
-Source Unknown

Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park....
Jurassic Park, that is.
-Larry Wall

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
-Thomas J. Watson

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
-Harry Weinberger

As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-Weisert

I'm not against machines, as are some people who feel that the computer is leading us back into the jungle...I'm against machines only when the convenience they afford to some people is regarded as more important than the inconvenience they cause to all.
In short, I don't think computers should wear the pants or make the decisions. They are deficient in humor, they are not intuitive, and they are not aware of the imponderables. The men who feed them seem to believe that everything is made out of ponderables, which isn't the case. I read a poem once that a computer had written, but didn't care much for it. It seemed to me I could write a better one myself, if I were to put my mind to it.
-E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, Dear Mr. ___, "The New Yorker", 1967

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
-Steve Wozniak

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
-Emo Philips

Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who's going to build.
-Larry Ellison

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-Edsger Dijkstra

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.
-Louis Gerstner

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
~Pablo Picasso

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

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.
~Nicholas Negroponte

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.
~Clifford Stoll

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
~Doug Larson

I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer.
~Dave Barry

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
~Isaac Asimov

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
~Stephen Hawking

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.
~Bill Gates

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
~Steve Wozniak

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
~Isaac Asimov

People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They're wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster.
~Adam Osborne

Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.
~Ray Kurzweil

The computer is a moron.
~Peter Drucker

The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.
~Douglas Engelbart

The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
~Ted Nelson

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second- rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
-Douglas Adams

At the present time there exist problems beyond our ability to solve, not because of theoretical difficulties, but because of insufficient means of mechanical computation.
-Howard Aiken, Proposed Automatic Calculating Machine, 1937

The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.
-Howard Aiken

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-Isaac Asimov

I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is The computer is down
-Norman Augustine

Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.
-J. G. Ballard

I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer.
-Dave Barry

The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.
-Dave Barry

The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.
-Jean Baudrillard

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data -- i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.
-Jean Baudrillard

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-Nathaniel Borenstein

Silicon Valley is like a person running around in front of a steamroller. You can outrun the steamroller on any given day. But if you ever sit down you get squashed.
-Bob Boschert

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is a frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.
-Arthur C. Clarke

There is never finality in the display terminal's screen, but an irresponsible whimsicality, as words, sentences, and paragraphs are negated at the touch of a key. The significance of the past, as expressed in the manuscript by a deleted word or an inserted correction, is annulled in idle gusts of electronic massacre.
-Alexander Cockburn

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
-Robert X Cringely

It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.
-Guy Debord

The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec.
-Marcus Dolengo

The computer is a moron.
-Peter Drucker

A computer won't clean up the errors in your manual of procedures.
-Sheila M. Eby

The workers and professionals of the world will soon be divided into two distinct groups. Those who will control computers and those who will be controlled by computers. It would be best for you to be in the former group.
-Lewis D. Eigen

I really don't care that I don't have what's current because whatever is at the moment, it will be infinitely better in a few months and even better months later.
-William Fink

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
-Bill Gates

I don't think there's anything unique about human intellience. All the nuerons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion.
-Bill Gates

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

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
-Grace Murray Hopper

We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.
-Grace Murray Hopper

I only know one person who was able to write a program in ink and have it run the first time. That was Dick Bloch. He drove nearly all of us crazy because he could do that. Since the Mark I was a relay and step counter machine, it was not too difficult to change the circuits. Every once in a while, Dick would get the idea of a new circuit that would make his problem run faster. He'd get together with one of the operators during the night and they would fix the circuit. The next morning my programs wouldn't run. It's much better to have machines that the programers cannot alter.
Commander Aiken was a tough taskmaster. I was sitting at my desk one day, and he said, You're going to write a book. I said, I can't write a book. He said, You're in the Navy now. And so I wrote a book. I have it here with me. This is the Mark I manual.
Howard Aiken always said that one day we would have computers that would fit in a shoe box. I don't t know how he knew that, but he did.
-Grace Murray Hopper

Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid.
-William M. Kelly

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
-Leslie Lamport

I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
-Janet Minor

I see no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.
-Kenneth Olsen

Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
-Jeff Pesis

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-Pablo Picasso

The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little.
-Porterfield

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
-Mitch Ratliffe
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.
-Bertrand Russell

To have no errors
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy
~Brian M. Porter, 1998

I wish life had an Undo function. ~Author Unknown

In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it. ~Author Unknown

In the old days, people robbed stagecoaches and knocked off armored trucks. Now they're knocking off servers. ~Richard Power

Mac users swear by their computers. PC users swear at their computers. ~Author Unknown

I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: "Macintosh - We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end." ~Douglas Adams

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

Microsoft, where quality is job 1.1. ~Author Unknown

Software is slowing faster than hardware is accelerating. ~Martin Reiser, quoted by Nicklaus Wirth, 1995, which spawned "Grove giveth, and Gates taketh away," author unknown, referring to CEOs of Intel and Microsoft

Some people can hack it, others can't. ~Author Unknown

The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad! ~Richard Feynman

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

Unix never says "please." ~Rob Pike

The Unix philosophy basically involves giving you just enough rope to hang yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure. ~Author Unknown

Unless in communicating with it one says exactly what one means, trouble is bound to result. ~Alan Turing, about computers

What boots up must come down. ~Author Unknown

Windows is just DOS in drag. ~Author Unknown

Computers must be female. No one but the creator understands their internal logic. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. The message "Bad command or file name" is about as informative as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly not going to tell you." Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. ~Author Unknown

Computers must be male. As soon as you commit to one you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the day. ~Author Unknown

What goes up must come down. Ask any system administrator.
~Anon.

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?
-Anon.

The Next Computer: The hardware makes it a PC, the software makes it a workstation, the unit sales makes it a mainframe.
-Anon.

Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
-Anon.

If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.
-Anon.

Intel has announced its next chip: the Repentium.
-Anon.

Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand.
-Anon.

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
-Anon.

Want to make your computer go really fast? Throw it out a window.
-Anon.

If a trainstation is where the train stops, what's a workstation...?
-Anon.

At the dictation of a mathematician, it will solve in a matter of hours equations never before solved because of their intricacy and the enormous time and personnel which would be required to work them out on ordinary office calculators.
-Anon., New York Times, 1944

Where the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons.
-Anon., "Popular Mechanics", March, 1949