200 FAMOUS QUOTES · COMPUTER
Read 200 of the best computer quotes about machines, technology, logic and calculation, from Charles Babbage, Nikola Tesla, Leibniz, Pascal and more.
“On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
Charles Babbage
“As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of the science.”
Charles Babbage
“I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!”
Charles Babbage
“The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery.”
Charles Babbage
“The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data.”
Charles Babbage
“It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“When there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“One suffices to derive all out of nothing.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“The arithmetical machine produces effects which approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing which would enable us to attribute will to it.”
Blaise Pascal
“The design of the following treatise is to investigate the fundamental laws of those operations of the mind by which reasoning is performed.”
George Boole
“By ratiocination I mean computation.”
Thomas Hobbes
“Reason is nothing but reckoning, that is adding and subtracting.”
Thomas Hobbes
“Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation.”
Pierre-Simon Laplace
“An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces, for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”
Pierre-Simon Laplace
“Seeing there is nothing that is so troublesome to mathematical practice than the multiplications, divisions, square and cubical extractions of great numbers.”
John Napier
“If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.”
Aristotle
“He set wheels of gold under them all that they might go of their own selves.”
Homer
“There were golden handmaids also who worked for him, and were like real young women, with sense and reason, voice also and strength.”
Homer
“Those who have cunning implements are cunning in their dealings, and those who are cunning in their dealings have cunning hearts.”
Chuang Tzu
“There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now.”
Samuel Butler
“Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them.”
Samuel Butler
“May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? An affectionate machine-tickling aphid?”
Samuel Butler
“Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas by his contrivance the most ignorant person might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, law, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.”
Jonathan Swift
“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain.”
Nikola Tesla
“We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.”
Nikola Tesla
Computers are among the most powerful tools ever created, but the dream behind them is centuries old. Long before laptops and smartphones, thinkers imagined machines that could calculate, reason and even think. Their words still help us understand what computers can do, and what they never should.
This collection brings together 200 of the best computer quotes from the pioneers and visionaries who shaped computing, including Charles Babbage, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Nikola Tesla, George Boole and Samuel Butler, along with timeless thoughts on machines, logic, data and technology. Whether you are a programmer, a student or simply curious, these quotes show how far the idea of the computer has travelled.
Quick answers about Computer quotes.
Charles Babbage is often called the father of the computer because he designed the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine in the 1800s. His Analytical Engine had many features of modern computers, including memory and a processing unit.
Babbage's story about being asked whether "wrong figures" in his machine would give "the right answers" is one of the most famous early computing quotes. It is the origin of the idea programmers now call "garbage in, garbage out."
Yes. In 1926, Nikola Tesla predicted that wireless technology would turn the whole earth into "a huge brain" and that people would carry devices "in his vest pocket" to communicate instantly across any distance.
Leibniz, who built an early calculating machine and developed the binary number system, believed it was unworthy of great minds to waste hours on calculation that machines could do. He also dreamed of settling arguments simply by saying "Let us calculate."
Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon warned about the future development of "mechanical consciousness," and Homer's Iliad describes golden handmaids with "sense and reason." Jonathan Swift even satirised a machine that could write books without genius or study.
Descartes's advice to "divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible" describes how programmers break down problems. Babbage's wrong-figures story and Kelvin's line about measuring things in numbers are also favourites.