Quotes from Daniel J. Bernstein

From a security perspective, if you're connected, you're screwed.

I thank God for not making me a computer scientist.

I do engineering, not religion.

I'm an academic. It's publish or perish.

In general, the Internet was not designed to accommodate deliberate failures to communicate.

The most important function of a bibliographic entry is to help the reader obtain a copy of the cited work.

I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces.

The average user doesn't give a damn what happens, as long as (1) it works and (2) it's fast.

Just because it's automatic doesn't mean it works.

Of course, the test difficulty depends on what you're doing, and on how you're doing it. I'm constantly asking "How much would I have to screw this up to write an incorrect function that passes these simple tests?" Occasionally the answer is "Not much," so I'll throw the code away and start over. It was probably perfect code, but that's not good enough.

The great thing about attackers is that there are so many to choose from!

I'm not interested in security through obscurity. I want real security mechanisms, solutions that work for _everybody_. Yes, that's a lot more difficult than randomly blowing away "suspicious" portions of the Internet mail infrastructure, but it's the Right Thing To Do.

I often see people saying 'Nobody has produced an invulnerable software system; therefore, nobody will ever produce an invulnerable software system.

Unless you have a hundred unanswered questions in your mind you haven't read enough...

I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces.

I thank God for not making me a computer scientist.

I'm not saying that this is how things should be. I'm saying that this is how things are.

The average user doesn't give a damn what happens, as long as (1) it works and (2) it's fast.

Indeed. With NT, I can usually see in a matter of minutes that what I'm trying to do simply can't be done with the available software.

In general, the Internet was not designed to accommodate deliberate failures to communicate.

I don't care where you think your resources are going. If you know, show me the measurements. If you don't, stop wasting my time.

From a security perspective, if you're connected, you're screwed.

That section of the fetchmail man page is wild speculation; it has never had any relation to reality.

Be careful what you wish for you just might get it.