Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

See Europe! Ten Countries in Seventeen Days!

Careful—we don't want to learn from this!

First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

“Conducting” is when you draw “designs” in the nowhere—with your stick, or with your hands—which are interpreted as “instructional messages” by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

Every nonzero finite-dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense when you don't think about it.

“A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!”

Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

I'm gonna wrap myself in paper, I'm gonna dab myself with glue, Stick some stamps on top of my head! I'm gonna mail myself to you.

Dare to be naïve.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.

The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

At some point, you have to jump out of the plane under the assumption that you can get the parachute sewn together in time to deploy it.

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it.

I don't care who does the electin' as long as I get to do the nominatin'.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.

Be and not seem.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.

For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say “Canada”. Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.

When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.

Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of £10. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

From a programmer's point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.

Galileo: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.

Computers are useless—they can only give you answers.

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

Never speak more clearly than you think

No unmet needs exist, and current unmet needs that are being met will continue to be met.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far the universe is winning.

With every passing hour our solar system comes 43,000 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.

How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155π10⁷ you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, π seconds is a nanocentury?

Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule.

The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

It's a d–mn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word!

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes…

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh… It will probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a blood-curdling maniacal scream, but still it will be a laugh.

A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.