Donald Ervin Knuth Quotes & Sayings

The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct. — Donald Ervin Knuth

Overstimulation has been the real drawback. I need to find ways to stop thinking about analysis of algorithms, in order to do various other things that human beings ought to do. — Donald Ervin Knuth

Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute. — Donald Ervin Knuth

An algorithm must be seen to be believed. — Donald Ervin Knuth

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. — Donald Ervin Knuth

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer; art is everything else. — Donald Ervin Knuth

Nearly every example of faulty reasoning that has been published is accompanied by the phrase "of course" or its equivalent. — Donald Ervin Knuth