Whitfield Diffie quotes

Lots of people working in cryptography have no deep concern with real application issues. They are trying to discover things clever enough to write papers about. (Whitfield Diffie)
People meet in bars after work all over the world and talk about the great problems of life and death and the world and politics and they don't take themselves seriously. They can do nothing else except chat about these things in bars after work. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
I thought cryptography was a technique that did not require your trusting other people-that if you encrypted your files, you would have the control to make the choice as to whether you would surrender your files. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
Some people make sharp distinctions sort of between their recreational musings and their professional work. I don't make that distinction very much. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
I liked Berkeley tremendously, Berkeley was a very leftist campus. I came to love that city as much as I love Paris or the south of France or New York. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
If you have ambition, you might not achieve anything, but without ambition, you are almost certain not to achieve anything. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
Two people can work on a problem better than one. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
It's simply unrealistic to depend on secrecy for security in computer software. You may be able to keep the exact workings of the program out of general circulation, but can you prevent the code from being reverse-engineered by serious opponents? Probably not. The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets. View quote
Whitfield Diffie
We in science are spoiled by the success of mathematics. Mathematics is the study of problems so simple that they have good solutions. (Whitfield Diffie)
One of the things that characterizes good intellectual work is a certain self-importance. View quote
Whitfield Diffie