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)

One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that–lacking zero–they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth

When you’ve got the code all ripped apart, it’s like a car that’s all disassembled. You’ve got all the parts tying all over your garage and you have to replace the broken part or the car will never run. It’s not fun until the code gets back to the baseline again. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. -- Galileo Galilei

There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. -- C. A. R. Hoare

Any fool can make the simple complex, only a smart person can make the complex simple. -- unknown

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. ~David Brinkley

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington

I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing. ~Martha Stewart

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone