Alexander Verge

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Inspired by the punched railway tickets of the time, an inventor by the name of Herman Hollerith devised a system of punched manila cards to store information, and a machine, which he called the Hollerith Machine, to count and sort them. Hollerith was awarded a patent in 1889, and the government adopted the Hollerith Machine for the 1890 census. No one had ever seen anything like it. Wrote one awestruck observer, “The apparatus works as unerringly as the mills of the Gods, but beats them hollow as to speed.” Another, however, reasoned that the invention was of limited use: “As no one will ever use it but governments, the inventor will not likely get very rich.” This prediction, which Hollerith clipped and saved, would not prove entirely correct. Hollerith’s firm merged with several others in 1911 to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. A few years later it was renamed—to International Business Machines, or IBM.”
― Brian Christian, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”
― Isaac Newton

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...”
― Isaac Asimov