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

Donald Knuth Science See all quotes by Donald Knuth →

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“Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

Resonant Thoughts

"The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reaso…"

— Charles Darwin

Science1758–1778

#mind

"Mahommad bin Qasim's first act of religious zeal was forcibly to circumcise the Brahmins of the captured city of Debul ; but on discovering that they objected to this sort of conversion, he proceeded …"

— Muhammad bin Qasim

Military696–715

#death

"I will have achieved my aim if, by the end of this book, you demand that people produce good reasons for what they believe—not only in religion, but in any area in which evidence can be brought to bea…"

— Jerry Coyne

Science1949

#faith