John McCarthy

The possibility of letting the machine alter its own instructions provides great power and also requires great caution.

There are no inherently difficult problems, only problems that are not properly understood.

The future of computing is interactive.

One can even conjecture that machines will eventually succeed in handling intellectual tasks as well as men.

The difference between theory and practice is smaller in theory than in practice.

A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.

The goal of AI is to understand the principles that make intelligence possible.

Garbage collection frees the programmer from the burden of explicit storage management.

The only way to have a correct program is to prove it correct.

In LISP, data and programs are represented the same way.

The idea of a computer utility is analogous to the electricity utility.

AI is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men.

If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility.

The most important single thing about LISP is that it is a language for expressing algorithms that manipulate symbolic expressions.

The problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will be substantially solved.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

A system that is to perform a complex task must be able to reason about its own actions.

The possibility of machines thinking has intrigued mankind for centuries.

The advantage of LISP is that it has no syntax.

The proper use of recursion is essential to programming in LISP.