Quotations about Computers

Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 Megabytes of fame. ~M.G. Siriam



The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim. ~Edsger W. Dijkstra


Computers have lots of memory but no imagination. ~Author Unknown


The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. ~Sydney J. Harris


If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. ~One of Murphy's Laws of Technology


My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them. ~Penn Jillett


Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. ~Author Unknown


The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. ~Eric Porterfield


Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog. ~Doug Larson


The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back. ~Author Unknown


Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked. ~Jeff Pesis


If it draws blood, it's hardware. ~Author Unknown


I haven't lost my mind; I have a tape back-up somewhere. ~Author Unknown


Back up my hard drive? How do I put it in reverse? ~Author Unknown


There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. ~Guy Almes


RAM disk is not an installation procedure. ~Author Unknown


The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec. ~Marcus Dolengo


Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months. ~Clifford Stoll


Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. ~Author Unknown


If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. ~Rob Stampfli


The attention span of a computer is only as long as its power cord. ~Author Unknown


Don't anthropomorphize computers - they hate it. ~Author Unknown


It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate. ~Nicholas P. Negroponte


The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. ~Andrew Brown


There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them! ~Richard P. Feynman


Jesus saves! The rest of us better make backups. ~Author Unknown






In God we trust, all others we virus scan. ~Author Unknown


There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer. ~J.H. Goldfuss


Programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. ~Michael Sinz


It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature. ~Author Unknown


If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into committees. That'll do them in. ~Author Unknown


I just wish my mouth had a backspace key. ~Author Unknown


Version 1 of any software is full of bugs. Version 2 fixes all the bugs and is great. Version 3 adds all the things users ask for, but hides all the great stuff in Version 2. ~Fred Blechman


The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor. ~John Allen Paulos


Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software. ~Author Unknown


To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. ~Farmer's Almanac, 1978


But they are useless. They can only give you answers. ~Pablo Picasso, about computers


Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all. ~John F. Kennedy


Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done. ~Andy Rooney


Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. ~Robert A. Heinlein


Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them. In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone proves otherwise. ~David Moschella


User, n. The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot." ~Dave Barry


After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy. ~John Pierce


Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining ten percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time. ~N.J. Rubenking


There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We do not believe this to be a coincidence. ~Jeremy S. Anderson


Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations.... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.' ~Peter F. Drucker


A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. ~Mitch Ratcliffe