So Stupid It’s Iconic   \nComputer Repair | Stevensville, MD, USA | Right | May 2, 2011           \nMe: “[Business name] Computers. How can I help you?”     \nCustomer: “I can’t get this internet program installed. Can I just have you guys do it?”  \nMe: “Sure. Just bring in your computer tower and we’ll take care of that for you.”    \n(About fifteen minutes later, the customer comes in the front door carrying his monitor.)   \nMe: “Can I help you bring in the rest of your computer, sir?”       \nCustomer: “Rest of my computer? This is my computer.”         \nMe: “Yes, sir. That is just your monitor. It only displays what your computer tells it to. What we need is your tower. It looks like one of these.”    \n(I point to several other towers in the store.)     \nCustomer: “Well, as long as I have this in here, can you remove some of the icons from the screen that I don’t use?”
Q-Wally-fied   \nComputer Repair | VA, USA | Right | April 28, 2011   \n(I am working on replacing a computer at a customer’s house. The customer’s mother walks in.)    \nMe: “Okay, I’m going to look at your video card now.”  \nMother: “What are you doing?”   \nMe: “Looking at the video card.”   \n(I take off the case to the computer.)  \nMother: “What are you doing?! You said you were looking at the video card!”     \nMe: “I have to take the case off to see it.”  \nMother: “I don’t feel comfortable with someone your age working inside my son’s computer.”      \nMe: “Ma’am, I am a fully certified technician. I’ve built and sold 3 computers in the past week. I will not harm your computer.”  \nMother: “I will just get my husband to do it, since he is more qualified.”   \nMe: “Well, that is fine. For my reference, what are his qualifications?”    \nMother: “He fixes our internet when it goes down.”
I Dreamed A Dream Of Calls Gone By     \nComputer Repair | New Zealand | Right | February 9, 2011     \n(I work at a place that does repairs for Sony computers, stereos, cameras and the like. Hence, our store has the word ‘Sony’ in the title.)     \nMe: “Good morning, [company name]. How can I help you?”     \nCustomer: “Is that Sony Music?”     \nMe: “No, sorry, this is Sony Repairs.”     \nCustomer: “I’m trying to get through to Simon Cowell. He works with Susan Boyle.”     \nMe: “No, sorry. We repair Sony laptops.”     \nCustomer: “So, you’re not Sony Music. Repairs are no good. Thanks.”     \n     \n
Needs A Mass Reboot     \nComputer Repair | Charleston, SC, USA | Right | February 4, 2011     \n(A customer walks up to the counter with a desktop and sets it down.)     \nCustomer: “Excuse me, are you Catholic?”     \nMe: “No.”     \nCustomer: “Well, I think it’s possessed and it needs an exorcism. Do you have any Catholic workers?”     \nMe: “I don’t think so. Maybe I can take a look at it?”     \nCustomer: “No! You have to be Catholic!” *takes his desktop and leaves*     \n     \n
iNeed A Raise     \nComputer Repair | Charleston, SC, USA | Right | February 1, 2011     \nMe: “Hi, how can I help you?”     \nCustomer: “My iPhone doesn’t work, and those idiots in the phone department couldn’t help me.”     \nMe: “May I take a look?”     \nCustomer: “Here it is. It won’t make phone calls.” *hands it to me*     \nMe: “Ma’am, this is an iPod Touch.”     \nCustomer: “That’s exactly what that dumba** in the phone department told me. God, are all you people stupid?! iPods look like this!” *holds up an iPod Classic*     \nMe: “That’s an iPod Classic. These are the new touch screen ones. May I see the box it came in?”     \nCustomer: “What? Here, fine.” *hands me the box*     \nMe: “Ma’am, can you read this to me please?”     \n(I flip the box to where the label clearly says iPod.)     \nCustomer: “What, are you blind too?! It says iP-…oh. Oh! Well, don’t I feel like a b****.” *walks off*     \nNext customer: “Whatever they’re paying you, it’s not enough.”     \n     \n
Business Daze     \nComputer Repair | Detroit, MI, USA | Right | December 21, 2010     \n(The customer has a covered hardware issue. It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.)     \nMe: “I’m going to request that a replacement device be sent to you, free of charge. You should receive your replacement in 2 business days.”     \nCustomer: “I shouldn’t have to wait 2 business days! You need to make it arrive Friday!”     \nMe: “I understand your frustration sir, but tomorrow is Wednesday and the second business day is Friday. Thursday is the holiday.”     \nCustomer: “You make it get here Friday!”     \nMe: “Sir, Wednesday is one business day. Friday is two business days. You will have your replacement on Friday.”     \nCustomer: “Put your supervisor on!”     \nSupervisor: *after greeting the customer and looking at the details for the replacement* “What can I do for you sir?”     \nCustomer: “That girl’s trying to teach me how to count!”     \n     \n
Constant New Viruses Are Such A Strain     \nComputer Repair | Maryland, USA | Right | September 27, 2010     \nCustomer: “Can you recommend a perfect anti-virus to use on my computer?”     \nMe: “At the rate viruses are coming out sir, there isn’t really any that protect your computer perfectly.”     \nCustomer: “So they don’t really work?”     \nMe: “No, not really sir.”     \nCustomer: “Oh. Well, which one doesn’t work the least?”     \n     \n
Assault And Battery     \nComputer Repair | Massachusetts, USA | Right | September 3, 2010     \nCustomer: “Hi, I think I have a problem with my computer. I tried fixing it myself, but now it’s just not booting at all. I’d like to have it backed up too while you’re at it, because I run a business and I can’t afford to lose anything.”     \n(The next day, I call the customer.)     \nMe: “Hello sir, was this the only copy you had for your business data?”     \nCustomer: “Yes.”     \nMe: “Well, do you have any disgruntled employees that may have had access to your computer recently?”     \nCustomer: “No, why?”     \nMe: “Well sir, the hard drive has been hacked at with what looks like a flat-head screwdriver, severing a connection on the bottom. It appears very deliberate, and we wont be able to retrieve your data.”     \nCustomer: “Do you mean the battery?”     \nMe: “No, sir, the hard drive.”     \nCustomer: “Oh. I thought that little round thing on the bottom of the hard drive was a battery. I was just trying to replace it. Well, I’ll just come in and pick that up.”     \nCustomer: “Very good sir.”     \n(4 minutes later, he calls back.)     \nCustomer: “Just a quick thing, if my wife comes in, and asks about it, could you leave that part out?”     \n     \n
Not Caught Up In The Web     \n Computer Repair | Tucson, AZ, USA | Right | May 4, 2010     \n Me: “Thank you for calling. This is [My Name]. How can I help you?”     \n Customer: “My mother’s computer won’t connect to the Internet.”     \n Me: “All right, let’s see if we can figure out the issue.”     \n (I spend five minutes troubleshooting the connection, and still can’t get it connected.)     \n Me: “I can’t find anything wrong with your computer. Is it a desktop or a laptop?”     \n Customer: “I don’t know. She’s in Florida, so I’ll have to call and ask her.”     \n Me: “Okay, do you happen to know her Internet service provider?”     \n Customer: “Yes, it’s you guys.”     \n Me: “Sir, we’re a repair center. Are you sure she has Internet?”     \n Customer: “Doesn’t it come free with the computer?”     \n Me: “No, They stopped doing that a while ago.”     \n Customer: “Figures. I’ll tell her!”     \n \n
Some Computer Owners Just Can’t Hack It     \n Computer Repair | San Antonio, TX, USA | Right | April 12, 2010     \n (A customer walks up to the counter and sets a plastic shopping bag down.)     \n Customer: “You have to help me!”     \n Me: “I’d be more than happy to assist you, ma’am. What seems to be the problem today?”     \n Customer: “I’m being hacked! You have to get them to stop using my computer!”     \n Me: “Do you have your computer with you so that I can see what’s going on?”     \n (She just turns the bag upside down. Parts of a laptop spill everywhere: motherboard, LCD panel, hinges, keyboard, palm rest, etc.)     \n Me: “Uh, ma’am? Why did you dismantle your computer?”     \n Customer: “That’s the only way to get them to stop! When computers are powered down, they aren’t really off! Those people in India are hacking into them while you have them off and are using it to teach their kids how to speak English! That’s why jobs are outsourced!”     \n Me: “I really don’t think I can help you, ma’am.”     \n Customer: “Well, put back together my computer! I have a warranty with you people. I’ll get the FBI or police to help me with the hackers.”     \n Me: “Our warranty does not cover you taking apart your computer.”     \n Customer: “Oh, my God! You’re one of the people helping those hackers, aren’t you?”     \n Me: *speechless*     \n Customer: “Aren’t you?!”     \n \n
Gives New Meaning To ‘Manually Eject’     \n Computer Repair | | Right | January 15, 2010     \n (An couple in their 50s enter the store with a laptop.)     \n Me: “Hi, what can I do for you?”     \n Husband: “Well, my laptop won’t turn on. It just goes to a black screen.”     \n Me: “Okay, sir, we can have the technicians do a diagnostic to figure out what the problem is.”     \n Husband: “I also think I might have left a disc in the DVD drive.”     \n Me: “Oh, no problem. I’ll show you how to manually eject the disc before you leave so you can take it home.”     \n (I grab a paperclip and manually eject the disc. The disc in the drive is a porn DVD. Immediately, the husband snatches it out of the tray and stuffs it into his pocket.)     \n Husband: *mumbles* “That’s not the disc I thought it was.”     \n Wife: *silently fuming*     \n \n
Step 1: Insert Foot Into Mouth     \n Computer Repair | | Right | July 22, 2009     \n (I am one of the few women working at my computer store. One day a male customer speaks up near me.)     \n Customer: “Wow, that’s a pretty big rack you’ve got there!”     \n Me: *looking up from monitor screen* “…excuse me?”     \n (I then follow his gaze to see him looking at a giant walk-in rack mount we have for sale.)     \n Customer: “Oh, wow. I gotta watch how I phrase things.”     \n \n
The Joy Of (Repeat) Checks     \n Computer Repair | | Right | June 29, 2009     \n Me: “Sir, your computer is all ready to go. We got all the viruses off of it.”     \n Customer: “Question: do you get viruses from looking at porno sites?”     \n Me: “Yes, sir, the majority of those sites contain viruses.”     \n Customer: “Hmm… well, then, I’ll probably be back here soon.”     \n \n
Good Examples Gone Bad     \n Computer Repair | | Right | June 15, 2009     \n (Note: A sincerely nice gentleman in his mid-sixties approaches the check-in counter with a CRT monitor.)     \n Me: “Hello, sir, what can i do for you?”     \n Man: “I can’t check my email any more and I need you to help me.”     \n Me: “Okay, no problem! Did you want to bring your computer in here, too?”     \n Man: “Here.”     \n (He sets his monitor on the counter.)     \n Me: “Um…”     \n Man: “What’s wrong?”     \n Me: “Well, sir, this is just your monitor. Imagine if you will that your DVD player…”     \n Man: *looks confused*”     \n Me: “…or VCR is broken and you want me to fix it, but you bring in your television.”     \n Man: “Oh, my goodness. I am so embarrassed.”     \n Me: “It’s completely understandable.Technology can be a bit overwhelming.”     \n Man: “I’ll go get my VCR!”     \n \n
Best Idea I’ve Heard All Day     \n Computer Repair | | Right | April 8, 2009     \n (The receptionist at our computer repair store is handling a customer at the front desk.)     \n Customer: “Can you fix my laptop screen? There’s a big black mark on it.”     \n (The customer opens the laptop to show a cracked screen.)     \n Receptionist: “How did that happen?”     \n Customer: “I closed it, but there was a beer bottle lid inside. It went weird after that.”     \n Receptionist: “We can repair it for you, but it will cost approximately $1,000 as this is physical damage and not covered by warranty.”     \n Customer: “I am not paying $1,000 to repair a stupid laptop! You are trying to rip me off, you little b****! It’s under warranty! I know my rights!”     \n Receptionist: “I am sorry, sir, but we cannot replace the LCD under warranty and you will have to pay for it yourself if you want it replaced.”     \n Customer: “I’m not paying, so you can go f*** yourself!”     \n Receptionist: “That’s the best idea I have heard all day, thanks! I’ll go do that right now.”     \n (The receptionist goes around corner and into back room.)     \n Customer: “What the f***?!” *leaves, slamming door*     \n Receptionist: “Is he gone?”     \n Manager: “Yes, are you finished?”     \n \n
Maybe Microsoft Makes Them     \n Computer Repair | | Right | August 20, 2008     \n (A customer has no power to a CD-ROM drive and has a disc stuck inside.)     \n Me: “Okay, here’s what you have to do. You need to find yourself a paperclip and unbend it a bit, so you have something to stick in the little hole next to the volume dial.”     \n Customer: “So… a paperclip, you say? Can I order that from you? I’m not sure what that is…”     \n \n
Blue Screen Flash Of Death     \n Computer Repair | | Right | June 15, 2008     \n (Client, a postman, walks in with his older machine. He sets it down on the desk. I turn it on and dust comes out the back. He explains how slow it’s been and how much he hates Windows Millennium Edition.)     \n Me: “We can fix that up for you, but with the cost of the upgrade to Windows XP, the memory to support it, etc, it might be wise just to purchase a new computer and transfer the data.”     \n Client: “Nah, that’s all right. I like this one.”     \n (I go around the desk to fetch his paper work. He somehow finds a paper clip and decides to remove the dust on the back of his power supply fan with it. Shortly thereafter, a blue flash comes out the back, he jumps a bit, and the computer turns off.)     \n Him: “Yanno what, I’ll just get that data backup.”     \n Me: “One moment, please…”     \n (Every customer in line and all of my employees cried laughing. Poor guy.)     \n \n
Computer hacking really results in financial losses and hassles. The objectives of terrorist groups are more serious. That is not to say that cyber groups can't access a telephone switch in Manhattan on a day like 9/11, shut it down, and therefore cause more casualties.     \nKevin Mitnick     \n
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.     \nEmo Philips     \n
Globalization has produced a new of level of interdependence among us. The economy and multinational supply chains do not abide by political boundaries. A computer ordered in Brazil is designed in California and assembled in several other countries. Economic integration was the first strong evidence of a new era.     \nEduardo Paes     \n
The human brain works as a binary computer and can only analyze the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can't be easily defined in zeros and ones.     \nNaveen Jain     \n
All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.     \nMark Kennedy     \n
A computer will do what you tell it to do, but that may be much different from what you had in mind.  Joseph Weizenbaum
Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening windows.   Anonymous
The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do. Marc Andreessen
There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.         Anonymous
Right now, computers, which are supposed to be our servant, are oppressing us.  Jef Raskin
Computers were a kind of magery in themselves, or might as well be to people who didn't understand them, they were every bit as inscrutable.     Orson Scott Card
Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn.   Steve Jobs
Computers are quiet and clean and totally distracting because the Internet is there, lying in wait for a moment of weakness to pounce on your creativity and progress.       Arlaina Tibensky
It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate.   Nicholas P. Negroponte
Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.       Ted Nelson
The similarities between humans and computers are more numerous than the differences.      P.A. Scott
The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.          Sherry Turkle
Computers are finite machines; when given the same input, they always produce the same output.      Greg Perry
Computer science really involves the same mindset, particularly artificial intelligence.      Frederick Lenz
It's hardware that makes a machine fast. It's software that makes a fast machine slow.       Craig Bruce
Computers no longer interface with humans they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival.    Alan Cooper
The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.      Bill Gates
Computers have lots of memory but no imagination.    Anonymous
Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success.     Tom DeMarco
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.       Sydney J. Harris
If you don’t know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.  Richard Dawkins
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its power cord.  Anonymous
It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.  Clive James
The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.   Brian Eno
The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.      Wernher von Braun
Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego, but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions.     Steve Wozniak
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.      Mitch Ratcliffe
Computers are composed of nothing more than logic gates stretched out to the horizon in a vast numerical irrigation system.    Stan Augarten
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.    Andy Rooney
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.  Albert Einstein
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in this world that just don't add up.    Evan Esar
The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask.    James Cameron
Computers are heaven-sent when they work and hell-spawn when they don't. There's just not much middle ground when it comes to technology.       Dani Harper
Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.     Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.   Bill Vaughan
The computer will not make a good manager out of a bad manager. It makes a good manager better faster and a bad manager worse faster.       Edward M. Esber
Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.     Seth Lloyd
The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us- we start editing ideas before we have them.    Austin Kleon
All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.        Isaac Asimov
A computer is almost human except that it does not blame its mistakes on another computer.      Anonymous
It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.         Tom Clancy
Computers are great tools, but they need to be applied to the physical world.   Tony Fadell
Computers do the calculating to allow people to transform the world.      Conrad Wolfram
Computer assisted proofs are getting better and better and computers will play a bigger and bigger role in the future.       Enrico Bombieri
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.      Dave Parnas
The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.      Leo Cherne
Computers are like old testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.    Joseph Campbell
Computers creating art is an upsetting concept mostly because of what it means about humans.     Jonny Lee Miller
Bad economics teaches that computers can design markets. Good economics teaches that markets can design computers.   Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
Our computers have become windows through which we can gaze upon a world that is virtually without horizons or boundaries.     Joseph B. Wirthlin
[Computer science] is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes...and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use."   Hal Abelson (1986) Introduction of video of lectures on the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (source).
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. — (Mis)attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, 1970.
Software engineering is the part of computer science which is too difficult for the computer scientist.  Friedrich Bauer, "Software Engineering." Information Processing: Proceedings of the IFIP Congress 1971, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, August 23-28, 1971.
Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.   Bill Gates cited in: "Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry", Tempus, by Susan Lammers (Editor)
Computer science... differs from physics in that it is not actually a science. It does not study natural objects. Neither is it, as you might think, mathematics; although it does use mathematical reasoning pretty extensively. Rather, computer science is like engineering; it is all about getting something to do something, rather than just dealing with abstractions, as in the pre-Smith geology.   Richard Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Computation, 1970
[Computers] are developing so rapidly that even computer scientists cannot keep up with them. It must be bewildering to most mathematicians and engineers... In spite of the diversity of the applications, the methods of attacking the difficult problems with computers show a great unity, and the name of Computer Sciences is being attached to the discipline as it emerges. It must be understood, however, that this is still a young field whose structure is still nebulous. The student will find a great many more problems than answers.    George Forsythe (1961) "Engineering students must learn both computing and mathematics". J. Eng. Educ. 52 (1961), p. 177. as cited in (Knuth, 1972) According to Donald Knuth in this quote Forsythe coined the term "computer science".
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.    Richard Hamming (1962) Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers. Preface
The only generally agreed upon definition of mathematics is "Mathematics is what mathematician's do." which is followed by "Mathematicians are people who do mathematics." What is true about defining mathematics is also true about many other fields: there is often no clear, sharp definition of the field.           In the face of this difficulty [of defining "computer science"] many people, including myself at times, feel that we should ignore the discussion and get on with doing it. But as George Forsythe points out so well in a recent article*, it does matter what people in Washington D.C. think computer science is. According to him, they tend to feel that it is a part of applied mathematics and therefore turn to the mathematicians for advice in the granting of funds. And it is not greatly different elsewhere; in both industry and the universities you can often still see traces of where computing first started, whether in electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or even business. Evidently the picture which people have of a subject can significantly affect its subsequent development. Therefore, although we cannot hope to settle the question definitively, we need frequently to examine and to air our views on what our subject is and should become.        Richard Hamming, 1968 Turing Award lecture, Journal of the ACM 16 (1), January 1969, p. 4. In this quote Hamming refers to George Forsythe, "What to do until the computer scientist comes", Am. Math. Monthly 75 (5), May 1968, p. 454-461.
Without real experience in using the computer to get useful results the computer science major is apt to know all about the marvelous tool except how to use it. Such a person is a mere technician, skilled in manipulating the tool but with little sense of how and when to use it for its basic purposes.       Richard Hamming, 1968 Turing Award lecture, Journal of the ACM 16 (1), January 1969, p. 6
Indeed, one of my major complaints about the computer field is that whereas Newton could say, "If I have seen a little farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," I am forced to say, "Today we stand on each other's feet." Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way. Science is supposed to be cumulative, not almost endless duplication of the same kind of things.     Richard Hamming, 1968 Turing Award lecture, Journal of the ACM 16 (1), January 1969, p. 7
I can’t be as confident about computer science as I can about biology. Biology easily has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. It’s at that level.   Donald Knuth (1993) Computer Literacy Bookshops Interview
Computer science is an empirical discipline. [...] Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available. Each new program that is built is an experiment. It poses a question to nature, and its behavior offers clues to an answer.    Allen Newell (1975) Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search. p. 114
Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction.     Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988), Ch. 6
Computer science is neither mathematics nor electrical engineering     Alan Perlis (1968) title of article "Computer Science is neither Mathematics nor Electrical Engineering" in: A. Finerman (Hg.), University Education in Computing Science, New York, London, pp. 69-77
Computer science research is different from these more traditional disciplines. Philosophically it differs from the physical sciences because it seeks not to discover, explain, or exploit the natural world, but instead to study the properties of machines of human creation. In this it is analogous to mathematics, and indeed the "science" part of computer science is, for the most part mathematical in spirit. But an inevitable aspect of computer science is the creation of computer programs: objects that, though intangible, are subject to commercial exchange.     Dennis Ritchie (1984) Reflections on Software Research.
During the last years of the 1950s, the terminology in the field of computing was discussed in the Communications of the ACM, and a number of terms for the practitioners of the field of computing were suggested: turingineer, turologist, flowcharts-man, applied meta-mathematician, applied epistemologist, comptologist, hypologist, and computologist. The corresponding names of the discipline were, for instance, comptology, hypology, and computology. Later Peter Naur suggested the terms datalogy, datamatics, and datamaton for the names of the field, its practitioners, and the machine, and recently George McKee suggested the term computics. None of these terms stuck...   Matti Tedre (2006). The Development of Computer Science: A Sociocultural Perspective. p. 260
Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.       David Wheeler (Attributed in: Butler Lampson. Principles for Computer System Design. Turing Award Lecture. February 17, 1993.) Wheeler is said to have added the appendage "Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection."
Also "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection". (Diomidis Spinellis. "Chapter 17. Another Level of Indirection". Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think. O'Reilly Media. June 2007.) "Indirection" is often changed to "abstraction".    The quote is called the fundamental theorem of software engineering by Andrew Koenig.
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.     Often attributed to Edsger Dijkstra (e.g. Haines 1993, Cohen & Haberman 2007, Denning 2010), but this might be folklore. This quote was published early 1990, in full:
Computer science is not about machines, in the same way that astronomy is not about telescopes. There is an essential unity of mathematics and computer science     \nMichael R. Fellows (1991) "Computer SCIENCE and Mathematics in the Elementary Schools", see also (comments by Ian Parberry. Parberry explains that Mike Fellows and Dijkstra had met in 1991 or 1992 at the University of Victoria and that "According to Mike, the quote in question was a rallying cry in that period."
"What would we like our children- the general public of the future—to learn about computer science in schools? We need to do away with the myth that computer science is about computers. Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools, it is about how we use them and what we find out when we do."       \nMichael R. Fellows, Ian Parberry (1993) "SIGACT trying to get children excited about CS". in: Computing Research News. January 1993.
On the other hand in 1993 Matthew Dennis Haines attributed the quote to Dijkstra in: M.D. Haines (1993) Distributed runtime support for task and data management. Technical Report CS-93-110 Colorado State University, p. 4. The origin of this quote is not listed, so this remains unclear.     \nDijkstra did write similar things, e.g., I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist. (EWD 1305)