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).

That is the inevitable human response. We’re reluctant to believe that great discoveries are in the air. We want to believe that great discoveries are in our heads—and to each party in the multiple the presence of the other party is invariably cause for suspicion. -- Malcolm Gladwell, Who says big ideas are rare?

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

The general principle for complexity design is this: Think locally, act locally. -- Richard P. Gabriel & Ron Goldman, Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. -- Colin Powell

- Gbi de fer - Howa! - On va en France - Non, je vais pas! - Pourquoi? - Parce ki y a pas agouti là-bas! -- Gbi de fer

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.~ Oscar Wilde

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ~Herman Melville

Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan