To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. -- Paul Graham.

We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure. -- Hugh Kingsmill

We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate causes of failure. -- Jared Diamond

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -- Hans Hofmann

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right. -- Richard Feynman

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle

Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. ~Anonymous

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. ~ Jim Rohn