The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public. -- Anonymous

Only make new mistakes. -- Phil Dourado

I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra

Abstraction is a form of data compression: absolutely necessary, because human short-term memory is so small, but the critically important aspect of abstraction is the algorithm that gets you from the name back to the "uncompressed" details. -- Bruce Wilder (blog post comment)

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. If you compete with slaves you become a slave. -- Paul Graham and Norbert Weiner, respectively

Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning. -- Rich Cook

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~Anonymous

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. ~Vidal Sassoon

Trust because you are willing to accept the risk, not because it’s safe or certain. ~Anonymous