A guideline in the process of stepwise refinement should be the principle to decompose decisions as much as possible, to untangle aspects which are only seemingly interdependent, and to defer those decisions which concern details of representation as long as possible. -- Niklaus Wirth

In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? -- David (Psalm 56:4)

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. -- Brian Kernigan

Software is like sex: It’s better when it’s free. -- Linus Torvalds

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (attributed)

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou

You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing. ~Philippos

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it. ~Washington Irving