“Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.”

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”

“The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.”

“Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. ”

“By claiming that they can contribute to software engineering, the soft scientists make themselves even more ridiculous. (Not less dangerous, alas!) In spite of its name, software engineering requires (cruelly) hard science for its support.”

“Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!”

“Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved forward.”