I can tell you dearest friend that if it became known how much friendship love and a world of human and spiritual references I have smuggled into these three movements the adherents of programme music - should there be any left - would go mad with joy.

By measuring the proportion of children living with the same parents from birth and whether their parents report a good quality relationship we are driving home the message that social programmes should promote family stability and avert breakdown.

I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting then I realised it was me.

It always helps to be a good programmer. It is important to like computers and to be able to think of things people would want to do with their computers.

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that once it is competently programmed and working smoothly it is completely honest.

I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand namely exactly nothing.

If I had done what I was programmed to do I would now be sitting in a car factory looking at the sizes of wheels or wondering how to get credit to start a new factory in Russia.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

I was never jailed. The fact is that I was arrested but I went into a diversion programme and by that time I'd already begun working in what was called anger management. It was a painful and awful moment.