Welcome to Computing Quotes, where the intersection of technology and wisdom awaits! Throughout the evolution of computing, from the advent of the first programmable computers to the era of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, luminaries in the field have shared profound insights, witty remarks, and thought-provoking observations. Whether you’re a seasoned programmer, a curious enthusiast, or simply someone intrigued by the ever-expanding digital realm, this collection of quotes encapsulates the essence of computing’s journey and its impact on our world.
From visionaries like Alan Turing and Grace Hopper to modern innovators such as Elon Musk and Tim Berners-Lee, the quotes gathered here offer glimpses into the minds of those who have shaped the technological landscape we inhabit today. Spanning topics from the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence to the practical challenges of software development, these quotes provide both inspiration and contemplation for anyone navigating the complexities of the digital age. So, without further ado, dive into the wisdom of computing pioneers and contemporary thinkers alike, and let their words ignite your imagination and fuel your passion for all things tech. Discover, reflect, and innovate as you explore the profound insights awaiting you below.
Computers and computing are all around us. Some computing is highly visible, like your laptop. But this is only part of a computing iceberg. A lot more lies hidden below the surface. We don’t see and usually don’t think about the computers inside appliances, cars, airplanes, cameras, smartphones, GPS navigators and games. Brian Kernighan
Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create. Howard Rheingold
Millennials, and the generations that follow, are shaping technology. This generation has grown up with computing in the palm of their hands. They are more socially and globally connected through mobile Internet devices than any prior generation. And they don’t question; they just learn. Brad D. Smith
Information theory began as a bridge from mathematics to electrical engineering and from there to computing. James Gleick
Scanadu is right at the heart of the next generation of computing, which combines mobility, sensors, cloud and big data. I am bullish on Scanadu and its potential to revolutionize the way we think about our health. Jerry Yang
It is easy to predict that some of the discoveries of research directed towards Grand Challenges – but only the most unexpected ones, and at the most unexpected times – will be the basis of revolutionary improvements in the way that we exploit the power of our future computing devices. Tony Hoare
If you think about computing, there isn’t just one way to compute, just like there’s not just one way to move around. You can have shoes, you can have a car, you can have a bicycle, submarine, rocket, plane, train, glider, whatever. Because you have one doesn’t mean you get rid of another one… But PCs continue to be important. Michael Dell
We are looking for an era where computing will actually merge with the physical world. Pranav Mistry
The idea of free software is that users of computing deserve freedom. They deserve in particular to have control over their computing. And proprietary software does not allow users to have control of their computing. Richard Stallman
The widespread adoption of broadband and the continued advances in personal computing technology are finally making it possible for the collective creation of an online world on a realistic scale. Mitch Kapor
By 2020, most home computers will have the computing power of a human brain. That doesn’t mean that they are brains, but it means that in terms of raw processing, they can process bits as fast as a brain can. So the question is, how far behind that is the development of a machine that’s as smart as we are? Seth Shostak
GIS is being influenced by and integrating with all kinds of new innovations such as faster computing, big data, the cloud, smart devices, and distributed processing. Jack Dangermond
The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. Richard Stallman
With the advent of computing, human invention crossed a threshold into a world different from everything that came before. The computer is the universal machine almost by definition, machine-of-all-trades, capable of accomplishing or simulating just about any task that can be logically defined. James Gleick
There’s more noise that comes with wearable computing, things that let us take pictures every 30 seconds as we walk around living our lives, and a huge number more photos per person will exist. Robert Scoble
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. Richard Hamming
My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
What happens to people like myself, who have been involved with computing for a long time, is that you begin to see how many of the ‘new’ ideas are simply old ones coming back into view on the swing of the pendulum, with new and faster hardware to back it up. Ellen Ullman
I think computing power is ready to do 3D justice. It was great for shooters and racing games in the past, but I didn’t think it was right for strategy games. Sid Meier
A bit, the smallest unit of information, the fundamental particle of information theory, is a choice, yes or no, on or off. It’s a choice that you can embody in electrical circuits, and it is thanks to that that we have all this ubiquitous computing. James Gleick
Computing is a big segment. It’s more than just mobile devices or PCs and laptops. Brian Krzanich
The 21st century has more potential than perhaps any other in our brief evolutionary history. We stand on the cusp of computing, genetic and energy generation breakthroughs that were only recently in the realm of science-fiction. A golden age of humanity is tantalisingly within our grasp. Clive Lewis
Computing is evolving beyond phones, and people are using it in context across many scenarios, be it in their television, be it in their car, be it something they wear on their wrist or even something much more immersive. Sundar Pichai
If we don’t figure out a way to have secure, connected healthcare, or connectivity and computing, we won’t have that industry develop. Steve Mollenkopf
There are no projects per se in the Computing Sciences Research Center. Ken Thompson
Gene therapy technology is much like computing technology. We had to build the super computer which cost $8 million in 1960. Now everyone has technologies that work predictably and at a cost the average person can afford. Liz Parrish
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word ‘frustration’. Alan Perlis
We absolutely do some of the best science in the world in Canada, across a broad spectrum of disciplines: quantum computing in Waterloo, paleontology in Alberta, neuroscience at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health in Vancouver, and many more. Robert J. Sawyer
For me, it matters that we drive technology as an equalizing force, as an enabler for everyone around the world. Which is why I do want Google to see, push, and invest more in making sure computing is more accessible, connectivity is more accessible. Sundar Pichai
We believe the future of computing should be natural. Rony Abovitz
The spread of information technology and the long-term decline in the cost of computing power have created opportunities that simply did not exist before. Airbnb, for example, could not have existed before the Internet. John McDonnell
Every kid coming out of Harvard, every kid coming out of school now thinks he can be the next Mark Zuckerberg, and with these new technologies like cloud computing, he actually has a shot. Marc Andreessen
The great advance of personal computers was not the computing power per se but the fact that it brought it right to your face, that you had control over it, that were confronted with it and could steer it. Kevin Kelly
People are going to use more and more AI. Acceleration is going to be the path forward for computing. These fundamental trends, I completely believe in them. Jensen Huang
The most important application of quantum computing in the future is likely to be a computer simulation of quantum systems, because that’s an application where we know for sure that quantum systems in general cannot be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. David Deutsch
When I think about strong innovations in term of automation, robotics, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence, they are coming a lot from the Philippines and from India as well. Pierre Nanterme
Many jobs at Google require math, computing, and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more. Thomas Friedman
By flattening time and space, social computing and business is unlocking credible potential within business. For example, individuals and organizations that weren’t connected before are now connected together. Parker Harris
The Internet is a computing platform built on top of core technology. Applied technology is what gets built on top of that: It’s Web services. Fred Wilson
I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world – some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh – paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. Thomas Friedman
Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing. David Petraeus
Immersion was founded in 1993 with the mission of bringing the sense of touch to computing. Our technology, TouchSense, is embedded in computer peripheral devices and allows users to reach in and physically interact with content on their computer screens. Louis B. Rosenberg
One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. Richard Stallman
Computing is becoming universal. Jay S. Walker
I started my second company in 1999. BodyMedia was set up to take advantage of the future of wearables – sensors and computing worn on our bodies in any and all ways that could make our lives better. Astro Teller
Even before the world had any cognizance of India as an economy, HCL had made a mark with its microprocessor in the ’80s. HCL pioneered modern computing. Shiv Nadar
I broke into the ranks of computing in the early 1980s, when women were just starting to poke their shoulder pads through crowds of men. There was no legal protection against ‘hostile environments for women.’ Ellen Ullman
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc, which set the computing world on its ear with the Macintosh in 1984. Kevin Mitnick
My father, an entrepreneur but hardly a technologist, was looking to buy a computer to ‘automate’ our family business. In 1981, he characteristically dove head first into computing and bought an Osborne I. Steven Sinofsky
Cloud computing means you are doing your computing on somebody else’s computer. Looking ahead a little, I firmly believe cloud – previously called grid computing – will become very widespread. It’s much cheaper than buying your own computing infrastructure, or maybe you don’t have the power to do what you want on your own computer. Whitfield Diffie
The computing world is very good at things that we are not. It is very good at memory. Eric Schmidt
Computing is no more about work – it’s all about making work happen with computers. Pranav Mistry
Computing technology started out as number-crunching. Ramez Naam
It’s a world of multiple screens, smart displays, with tons of low-cost computing, with big sensors built into devices. At Google, we ask how to bring together something seamless and beautiful and intuitive across all these screens. Sundar Pichai
The world got enamored with smartphones and tablets, but what’s interesting is those devices don’t do everything that needs to be done. Three-D printing, virtual-reality computing, robotics are all controlled by PCs. Michael Dell
Computing should be taught as a rigorous – but fun – discipline covering topics like programming, database structures, and algorithms. That doesn’t have to be boring. Geoff Mulgan
As far as solving India’s problems with technology is concerned, I think there are some wrong assumptions in making computing work at the grassroots. We need to go beyond the notion of technology being all about computers. Pranav Mistry
I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth and Sun are reshaped into computing elements. Eliezer Yudkowsky
Future is mobile computing – smartphones and tablets are just elements of it. The industry is on the verge of a whole new paradigm. Thorsten Heins
Growing new limbs, copying internal organs like a Xerox machine, exponential increases in computing power, better eyes and ears – I could read stories like this endlessly. S. Jay Olshansky
Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic. George Dyson
The U.S. has always been a global innovation vanguard – driving advancements in computing, communication, and media to rail, automobiles, and aeronautics. Shervin Pishevar
Computers are really, basically, computing elements and a lot of memory. They are pretty easy to understand, as compared to the brain, which was designed by evolution. Paul Allen
There are seven billion people in the world. And I think phones are the first time most people will have access to a modern computing device. With Android, we want to enable that for people. Sundar Pichai
In a sense, there is no such thing as a bargain in computing. Models which are popular sell for the price they are supposed to fetch for the best part of their product cycle. David Hewson
What amplifies the transformational power ahead is the confluence of two major technological currents today: the universal access to mobile computing and the pervasive use of social networks. Michael J. Saylor
I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces. Daniel J. Bernstein
Nobody programmes the brain, yet it keeps learning. India shouldn’t miss the emerging age of brain-inspired computing. Kris Gopalakrishnan
Cloud computing is a challenge to security, but one that can be overcome. Whitfield Diffie
One of the great things about an open system like Android is it addresses all ends of the spectrum. Getting great low-cost computing devices at scale to the developing world is especially meaningful to me. Sundar Pichai
In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. Marc Andreessen
They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want. Larry Ellison
Cloud computing is the third wave of the digital revolution. Lowell McAdam
Back in 1995, Bill Gates himself didn’t understand that the internet was the direction computing was going. John Podhoretz
Creative Cloud is Adobe re-imagining itself amid a world of these three transformations – cloud, multiscreen and social computing – which are all happening at the same time. Kevin Lynch
Thanks to the rise of cloud computing, collaboration tools are becoming increasingly affordable, allowing even the smallest firms to implement enterprise-grade solutions that can significantly improve communication lines between employees and customers. Jean-Philippe Courtois
In the post-Snowden world, you need to enable others to build their own cloud and have mobility of applications. That’s both because of the physicality of computing – where the speed of light still matters – and because of geopolitics. Satya Nadella
Essentially, we’re always trying to reduce latency. As you try to reduce the latency of the experience, you can only get it down so far before we start running into the limitations of game engines, computing, the intensity of the experience you’re trying to compute. Brendan Iribe
Before ‘Dilbert,’ I tried to become a computer programmer. In the early days of computing, I bought this big, heavy, portable computer for my house. I spent two years nights and weekends trying to write games that I thought I would sell. Turns out I’m not that good a programmer, so that was two years that didn’t work out. Scott Adams
I have to admit it: I’m not a huge fan of the cloud computing concept. Jamais Cascio
Being at NASA and having the access to both computing capability and satellite observation capability is kind of the ideal research situation to try to understand global climate change. James Hansen
Closed environments dominated the computing world of the 1970s and early ’80s. An operating system written for a Hewlett-Packard computer ran only on H.P. computers; I.B.M. controlled its software from chips up to the user interfaces. Ellen Ullman
The computing field is always in need of new cliches. Alan Perlis
Accelerating technology innovations such as ubiquitous sensors, cheap computing power, and 5G networks will open entirely new opportunities and challenges. Cathy Engelbert
Productivity is grounded in the PC. Where does the computing power come from? How would you run ‘USA Today’ without PCs? Run a hospital without PCs? People don’t want products, they want solutions. Michael Dell
The act of voting, to put it in computing terms, is a question of user interface. Ellen Ullman
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms. Ben Horowitz
People constantly face problems they’ve never seen before, and they have to solve them somehow. So a million people come up with a million solutions that are just a little bit different. If computing is being done by fewer resources, there will be enormous security gains by pushing things into standard practices. Whitfield Diffie
Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant market for hardware and services. Jamais Cascio
We believe behavioral science, cognitive computing, and machine intelligence are essential to a successful, holistic surveillance offering and critical to efficient and effective organizational compliance with an increasingly intricate global regulatory environment. Adena Friedman
In 20 or 30 years, you’ll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world. Douglas Engelbart
With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time. Satya Nadella
A lot of the progress in machine learning – and this is an unpopular opinion in academia – is driven by an increase in both computing power and data. An analogy is to building a space rocket: You need a huge rocket engine, and you need a lot of fuel. Andrew Ng
The way Moore’s Law occurs in computing is really unprecedented in other walks of life. If the Boeing 747 obeyed Moore’s Law, it would travel a million miles an hour, it would be shrunken down in size, and a trip to New York would cost about five dollars. Those enormous changes just aren’t part of our everyday experience. Nathan Myhrvold
India for sure is a mobile-first country. But I don’t think it will be a mobile-only country for all time. An emerging market will have more computing in their lives, not less computing, as there is more GDP and there is more need. As they grow, they will also want computers that grow from their phone. Satya Nadella
If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business. Marc Benioff
Internally, we’re focused on building our own technology, leveraging all the momentum that’s out there around wearable computing and mobile computing and PC computing. But at the end of the day, all the code we’ve written and all the invention we’ve created has been focused on our own tech and our own products. Brendan Iribe
I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there’s a sucker born every minute. Richard Stallman
Originally, I was in both software and in online computing. The first innovation really was sort of at that time that we’re marrying the telephone and the computer so that people wouldn’t have to drive to the computer center. We didn’t have $1,000 computers. Sam Wyly
The immediacy of the mobile changes it from what we’re accustomed to in the personal computing world to something that’s instantaneous… What’s interesting and powerful about the mobile environment is that it’s connected to services on the Internet. This augments both platforms. Vint Cerf
