Donald Knuth Quotes

The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

Donald Knuth

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Quotes to Explore

• Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

  

  P. G. Wodehouse
  • God
  • Knowledge
  • Alone

• But in the east the sky was pale and through the gray woods came lanterns with wagons and horses, bringing Grandpa and Grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins.

  

  Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • Sky
  • Grandma
  • Woods

• Healthy is in the eye of the beholder.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • Eye
  • Healthy
  • Beholder

• Steve Jobs has been right twice. The first time we got Apple. The second time we got NeXT. The Macintosh ruled. NeXT tanked. Still, Jobs was right both times.

  

  Gary Wolf
  • Time
  • First
  • Apple

• I'm an artist at heart.

  

  Lance Reddick
  • Heart
  • Artist

• I want minimum information given with maximum politeness.

  

  Jackie Kennedy
  • Want
  • Information
  • Given

• Every different director has another language - for instance, Hitchcock does not like any bright color ever, unless the story says 'there goes the girl in a red dress.'

  

  Edith Head
  • Different
  • Girl
  • Language

• My greatest aspiration was always to live in the tropics.

  

  Manuel Puig
  • Live
  • Always
  • Greatest

• Salaries and wages must reflect the reality of the enterprise's economic performance; deviations from the planned performance should be reflected in pay.

  

  Samora Machel
  • Reality
  • Performance

• I've had completely gray hair since, like, 30.

  

  Larry Hogan
  • Like
  • Hair
  • Gray

• I have had that same experience where there are several people who have come up in my life at the right time and have made critical contributions to how I see the world and how I see myself.

  

  Mahershala Ali
  • People
  • Life
  • Up

• I changed that system in Florida when I was the Speaker of the House - I was the Minority Leader; I saw for 16 years the way a power system works.

  

  Dan Webster
  • Power
  • House
  • Leader

• I think that it's the love of God that brings man into repentance. Once you embrace that love and have that fellowship with God, all those things that you shouldn't be doing will go away.

  

  Tasha Smith
  • God
  • Love
  • Will

• I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • People
  • Great
  • Real

• Power in politics, sovereignty in America is with we the people, and that is the path to turning this country around: empowering the people.

  

  Ted Cruz
  • People
  • Country
  • Power

• Happiness is knowing and appreciating what you've got. I am very, very, very grateful for what, to me, is dead easy.

  

  Maeve Binchy
  • Happiness
  • Knowing
  • Grateful

• I'm not a god - I do bad things.

  

  Jackie Chan
  • God
  • Bad
  • Things

• In the Army, because the stakes are so high - right? - you can't just be a yes-man and say, 'Great idea, boss!' if you don't believe it - right? - because lives are at stake. And the commanders that I've worked for, they want frank assessments; they want criticism and feedback.

  

  H. R. McMaster
  • Great
  • Believe
  • High

• I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young.

  

  Maurice Sendak
  • Work

• William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.

  

  James Dickey
  • Time
  • Great

• In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as brazilwood and pepper, which added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity... From these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales.

  

  Claude Levi-Strauss
  • People
  • Time
  • Experience

• We've got a week that's real busy ahead of us. We've got to stay the course, and that's important for us right now.

  

  Phil Jackson
  • Important
  • Real
  • Week

• I'm shocked that I can live pretty well, or reasonably, or make a certain amount of my living, anyway, off of prints. I guess it's nuts. I don't believe in it. I never anticipated it; I still don't believe it.

  

  Garry Winogrand
  • Believe
  • Live
  • Pretty

• The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

  

  Donald Knuth
  • Time
  • Real
  • Evil