You can only get a beginner's mind once.

Technology does not run backward. Once a technical capability is out there, it is out there for good.

No one in the government is seriously penalized when Social Security numbers are stolen and misused; only the number-holders suffer.

Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or background.

UNIX always presumes you know what you're doing. You're the human being, after all, and it is a mere operating system.

Writing was a way to get away from my life as a programmer, so I wanted to write about other things, but of course nobody wanted to publish another story about a family, unless it was extraordinary. When I began writing about my life as a programmer, however, people were interested.