Top 100 Computers Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best computers quotes ever written, picked out of the full computers archive on QuoteForever. You will find Steve Jobs, Ted Nelson, Douglas Rushkoff and Kevin Mitnick among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

I'm a '70s mom, and my daughter is a '90s mom. I know a lot of women my age who are real computer freaks.

2

The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.

3

Starting early and getting girls on computers, tinkering and playing with technology, games and new tools, is extremely important for bridging the gender divide that exists now in computer science and in technology.

4

I started on an Apple II, which I had bought at the very end of 1978 for half of my annual income. I made $4,500 a year, and I spent half of it on the computer.

5

Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.

6

I'm too old-fashioned to use a computer. I'm too old-fashioned to use a quill.

7

Obviously, our children, who have been playing with their computers since the age of five or six, don't have quite the same brain as those who were brought up on wooden or metal toys, whose brains are certainly atrophied by comparison.

8

Computers make me totally blank out.

9

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

10

Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

11

If the machines can take the drudgery out of it and just leave us with the joy of drawing, then that's the best of both worlds - and I'll use those computers!

12

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.

13

The early cyberpunk idea was that networked computers would let us do our work at home, as freelancers, and then transact directly with peers over networks. Digital technology would create tremendous slack, allow us to apply its asynchronous, decentralized qualities to our own work and lives.

14

Technology has moved away from sharing and toward ownership. This suits software and hardware companies just fine: They create new, bloated programs that require more disk space and processing power. We buy bigger, faster computers, which then require more complex operating systems, and so on.

15

I've come to a view that humans will continue to do what we do well, and that computers will continue to do what they do very well, and the two will coexist, but in different spaces.

16

I closely follow everything about user interface or human-computer interface: technology that makes computers closer to the way the human being actually functions.

17

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.

18

I am a huge supporter for cash for caulkers - which allows people to make improvement for energy efficient in their homes. We should do the same for Americans purchasing appliances and computers and for that matter, new air-conditioner and heating units.

19

I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.

20

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

21

I take computers practically apart and put them back together. I have a supercomputer I built over the years out of different computers.

22

Right now, computers, which are supposed to be our servant, are oppressing us.

23

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

24

I'm a Luddite with computers, and I'm slightly worried about being hacked as well.

25

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.

26

Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.

27

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

28

Beatbullying's 'The Big March 2012' is such a brilliant campaign and I am very proud to be a part of it. I have been a victim of cyber bullying myself and I know firsthand just how hurtful it can be. People think that they can hide behind computers and send nasty and hurtful comments to people, and this is wrong.

29

Software comes from heaven when you have good hardware.

30

Access to computers and the Internet has become a basic need for education in our society.

31

It was used for decades to describe talented computer enthusiasts, people whose skill at using computers to solve technical problems and puzzles was - and is - respected and admired by others possessing similar technical skills.

32

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc, which set the computing world on its ear with the Macintosh in 1984.

33

You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?

34

I use many different gadgets connected with computers; I use PCs, laptops and a Palm Pilot. I also use the Internet to visit websites, especially within Polish-language Internet. I usually go to political discussion groups and sites - of course, as I use my real name, people never believe that they are chatting with me!

35

And it's here and it's ready and we can really revolutionize the way we educate our children with tablet computers, and I'm committed to doing whatever I can to speaking to whomever I can to send this signal - to pound this message home. Now is the time.

36

Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.

37

I have a crazy amount of different jobs, so the way I manage that is to not do more than one at a time. It's like old computers that had small memory chips, they would do something called swapping, where they would fill the memory with one task, do it and get it out.

38

People are good at figuring out what's attractive, and computers are good at quickly searching and finding. You put them together, and bang!

39

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

40

I wouldn't know how to find eBay on the computer if my life depended on it.

41

I am very bad at computers. I don't really know how to write email.

42

Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.

43

Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.

44

I've always been slightly embittered about computers because it was the only subject I failed at school.

45

I'd like to think life has improved since 1850, despite the long hours we all seem to spend slaving over hot computers, but the psychological journeys remain the same - the search for love, identity, a meaningful place in the world.

46

Every piece of software written today is likely going to infringe on someone else's patent.

47

Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.

48

People are craving this great progress in electronics, going after computers, the Internet, etc. It's a giant progress technologically. But they must have a balance of soul, a balance for human beauty. That means art has an important role.

49

Computer science is one of the worst things that ever happened to either computers or to science.

50

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.

51

I'm not really gadget oriented. I'm not into technology or computers. I'm not good at interfacing with that sort of gear.

52

If you could utilize the resources of the end users' computers, you could do things much more efficiently.

53

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is 'The computer is down.'

54

Google is about information and computers and making things really fast. Facebook is about the sharing and connections. These missions give these companies direction and motivation.

55

Man-made computers are limited in their performance by finite processing speed and memory. So, too, the cosmic computer is limited in power by its age and the finite speed of light.

56

The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

57

The computer is a moron.

58

Because I believe that humans are computers, I conjectured that computers, like people, can have left- and right-handed versions.

59

Our lives sometimes depend on computers performing as predicted.

60

Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We'll have more power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the entire world today.

61

In the past, missionaries have traveled to far countries with the message of the gospel - with great hardship and often with the loss of life. In contrast, we can reach millions instantly from the comfort of our homes by merely hitting the 'send' button on our computers, or with iPads, or phones.

62

Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.

63

I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.

64

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!

65

The Web is actually a coming together of three technologies, if you like: the hypertext, the personal computer, and the network. So, the network we had, and the personal computers were there, but people didn't use them, because they didn't know what to use them for, except maybe for a few games.

66

I happen to think that computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago.

67

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

68

Computers have become more friendly, understandable, and lots of years and thought have been put into developing software to convince people that they want and need a computer.

69

Computers and the Internet have made it really easy to rant. It's made everyone overly opinionated.

70

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

71

I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray.

72

I worked at a local country club that I never belonged to. I did random tasks in the pro shop and supposed to be in charge of the register, but that didn't go so well. They quickly realized I was better with people, not computers.

73

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

74

Your computer needn't be the first thing your see in the morning and the last thing you see at night.

75

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

76

So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature.

77

One of the biggest challenges we had in the first decade was not that many people had personal computers. There weren't that many people to sell to, and it was hard to identify them.

78

I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.

79

This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.

80

Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn.

81

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

82

My whole life had been designing computers I could never build.

83

There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.

84

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

85

The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.

86

They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.

87

Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.

88

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.

89

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

90

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.

91

In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.

92

How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us - computers and cell phones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.

93

We're entering a new world in which data may be more important than software.

94

If computers remain far worse than us at image recognition, a certain over-confident combination of man and machine can elsewhere take inaccuracy to a whole new level.

95

Computers tend to separate us from each other - Mum's on the laptop, Dad's on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on.

96

I am such a gearhead. In my recording studio, I personally engineer and edit everything on computers.

97

Computers have virtually replaced tape recorders.

98

Why does everyone think the future is space helmets, silver foil, and talking like computers, like a bad episode of Star Trek?

99

What do we want our kids to do? Sweep up around Japanese computers?

100

It's interesting to see what people are saying about me. I like keep up with the latest rumors! A while back there was a rumor that I was going to do a film with Demi Moore about the takeover of Commodore computers!

More Computers quotes

This is the short list. The full computers quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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