Konrad Zuse

The future belongs to the machine that can think, but it must think in the service of humanity.

I built my first computer in my parents' living room. It nearly burned down twice.

The problem with pioneering work is that you have to do everything yourself, down to the last screw.

Memory is the cornerstone of computing. Without a way to store numbers and instructions, a machine is just a calculator.

The world of formulas is more real than the physical world, because it is free of contradictions.

Engineers are the real poets of the modern world, because they create new realities from ideas.

The Z4 survived because I moved it from Berlin piece by piece in a horse-drawn cart.

A machine does not get tired. It does not make slips of the hand. That is its advantage.

I never got a degree in computer science. There was no such thing. I was a civil engineer with a dream.

The Plankalkül could have handled artificial intelligence problems, but it was a voice crying in the wilderness.

Progress is not made by reasonable people. It is made by stubborn ones.

The separation of storage and control unit – that was the fundamental architectural insight.

War is the worst enemy of invention. It distorts all purpose.

I did not invent the computer to break codes or calculate trajectories. I invented it to solve engineering problems.

Relay technology was a gift from the telephone engineers. Without it, my early machines would have been impossible.

The most difficult part was not the mechanics, but the logic. To make the machine understand the conditions: if this, then that.

A good design is one where the function is visible in the form.

My machines were born from necessity, the mother of all invention.

The computer will liberate humans from soul-destroying routine calculation.

I often worked alone, but I never felt alone. The machine was my companion.