Richard Hamming

“If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.”

“If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.”

“The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.”

“Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures. There are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.”

“The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together.”

“If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you don't quite know what problems are worth working on.”

“If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.”

“What you learn from others you can use to follow.What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.”

“Good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system.”