Since programmers create programs out of nothing, imagination is our only limitation. Thus, in the world of programming, the hero is the one who has great vision. Paul Graham is one of our contemporary heroes. He has the ability to embrace the vision, and to express it plainly. His works are my favorites, especially the ones describing language design. He explains secrets of programming, languages, and human nature that can only be learned from the hacker experience. This book shows you his great vision, and tells you the truth about the nature of hacking. -- Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator of Ruby

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. -- Philip Greenspun (Greenspun's Tenth Rule)

Lisp programmers know the value of everything but the cost of nothing. -- Alan J. Perlis

What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! ... When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. ... Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. -- Rush (Freewill)

Its a shame that the students of our generation grew up with windows and mice because that tainted our mindset not to think in terms of powerful tools. Some of us are just so tainted that we will never recover. -- Jeffrey Mark Siskind in comp.lang.lisp

What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable. ~Anonymous

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~Bruce Lee

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them. ~Henry Kravis

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller