I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of ones contributions to computer science. – Donald Knuth
People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on eachother, like a wall of mini stones. – Donald Knuth
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. – Donald Knuth
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird. – Donald Knuth
Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply given, elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science. – Paul Davies