"The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random."

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

"More important still, perhaps, the sanctity of treaties and of the public law of Europe has been finally vindicated; and last, and most important of all, we have set up in the League of Nations a new …"

— H. H. Asquith

Politics1852–1928

#justice

"To rationalize their lies, people — and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose — are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just. Clinton may have lied to preserve hi…"

— Wendy Kaminer

Literature1949

#justice

"Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and b…"

— Theodore Roosevelt

Politics1858–1919

#justice

"The modern writer is too often a Theseus so enamored of the grotesque appearance and strange cavortings of the Minotaur that he has decided to make his permanent abode in the Labyrinth, and to accept …"

— Robertson Davies

Literature1913–1995

#justice