Ken Thompson

Computing is not about what you know, but what you can build.

The essence of Unix is modularity and clarity.

Wisdom in programming comes from experience, mostly from bad experience.

A good system is one that is easy to change.

Politics in tech is like debugging in the dark.

The joy of computing is in the creation, not the consumption.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Bugs lurk in every corner, waiting for the unwary.

True genius in software is making the complex simple.

The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.

In the world of code, elegance is efficiency.

Teamwork in computing is multiplying errors by the number of members.

The path to mastery is through persistent practice.

Open source is the future; closed minds are the past.

Every line of code is a decision.

Laughter is the best debugger.

The meaning of life? Write good software.

Innovation thrives on constraints.

Wisdom is knowing when to refactor.

Code should be like poetry: concise and evocative.