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

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

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

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”

“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.”

“Your obligation is that of active participation. You should not act as knowledge-absorbing sponges, but as whetstones on which we can all sharpen our wits”

“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.”