Attributed

• "The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in. We're computer professionals. We cause accidents." [Comment while teaching a Software Engineering course at CMU, circa 1985.]

• "It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter." [Footnote in a paper about computational email.]

• "Spam is bad. The amazing degree of unanimity that greets such a simple declaration is, paradoxically, the biggest impediment to progress in anti-spam standards." [Presentation to NIST/FCC on the spam problem, 2004.]