How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
Interpretation
Ownership of abstract concepts like numbers is meaningless because they exist independently of individuals.
In this quote, Donald Knuth challenges the idea of ownership over numbers, which are fundamental concepts that belong to the collective understanding of humanity. By asserting that numbers belong to the world, he emphasizes the notion that certain ideas and truths are universal and not confined to private possession or individual control.
In practice
In a discussion about the ethics of data ownership in technology, this quote can highlight the collective nature of knowledge.
Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.
The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it
A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.
Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.
The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.
The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things
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