Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. (I have made this letter so long only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.) -- Blaise Pascal (Lettres Provinciales)

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. -- Alfred North Whitehead (Introduction to Mathematics)

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).

Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it ain't fun -- it's entertainment. -- David Mamet (as relayed by Joss Whedon)

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. -- William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)

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

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. ~Audre Lorde

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. ~Albert Einstein

The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it. ~Henry Ford

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi