Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. -- Cited by Randy Pausch

Let me try to get this straight: Lisp is a language for describing algorithms. This was JohnMcCarthy's original purpose, anyway: to build something more convenient than a Turing machine. Lisp is not about file, socket or GUI programming - Lisp is about expressive power. (For example, you can design multiple object systems for Lisp, in Lisp. Or implement the now-fashionable AOP. Or do arbitrary transformations on parsed source code.) If you don't value expressive power, Lisp ain't for you. I, personally, would prefer Lisp to not become mainstream: this would necessarily involve a dumbing down. -- VladimirSlepnev

The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It’s to create more leaders. -- Ralph Nader

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. -- Mark Twain

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

We really have to get over the idea that some stuff is just worth knowing even if you never do anything with it. Human memories happily erase stuff that has no purpose, so why try to fill up children's heads with such stuff? -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. ~Mark Twain

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. ~Jim Ryun

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman