If you are designing cryptosystems, you've got to think about long-term applications. You've got to try to figure out how to build something that is secure against technology in the next century that you cannot even imagine. Whitfield Diffie More Quotes by Whitfield Diffie More Quotes From Whitfield Diffie If you have ambition, you might not achieve anything, but without ambition, you are almost certain not to achieve anything. Whitfield Diffie achieveambitionmight 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 realcleverwriting 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. Whitfield Diffie techniquechoicespeople I have been working on two problems for three years: one of them for 8 or 9 years, and one of them for 3, 4, 5 years. Whitfield Diffie threetwoyears Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people. Whitfield Diffie encryptionstrongpeople The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets. Whitfield Diffie reliancestrongsecret One of the things that characterizes good intellectual work is a certain self-importance Whitfield Diffie certainintellectualself 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 Whitfield Diffie life-and-deathbarspeople If you say to people that they, as a matter of fact, can't protect their conversations, in particular their political conversations, I think you take a long step toward making a transition from a free society to a totalitarian society. Whitfield Diffie longpeoplethinking Two people can work on a problem better than one Whitfield Diffie problemtwopeople I have always believed the thesis that one's politics and the character of one's intellectual work are inseparable. Whitfield Diffie intelligenceintellectualcharacter 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 Whitfield Diffie communicationtechnologykeys 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 studyproblemsimple 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. Whitfield Diffie pariscitiesnew-york Some people make sharp distinctions sort of between their recreational musings and their professional work. I don't make that distinction very much Whitfield Diffie professional-workdistinctionpeople 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. Whitfield Diffie secretsyouseriousstrong Cloud computing means you are doing your computing on somebody else's computer. Looking ahead a little, I firmly believe cloud - previously called grid computing - will become very widespread. It's much cheaper than buying your own computing infrastructure, or maybe you don't have the power to do what you want on your own computer. Whitfield Diffie lookingyoupowerbelieve I thought of computers as very low class. I thought of myself as a pure mathematician and was interested in partial differential equations and topology and things like that. Whitfield Diffie computersthoughtthingsmyself I really believe in the radical viewpoint. And I have always believed that one's politics and the character of his particular work are inseparable. Whitfield Diffie politicsworkcharacterbelieve I guess, in a very real sense, I'm a Gnostic. I had been looking all my life for some great mystery... I think somewhere deep in my mind is the notion that if I could learn just the right thing, I would be saved. Whitfield Diffie my-lifegreatmindlife
