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)

Ils ne sont pas forts parce qu'ils sont forts. Ils sont forts parce que nous sommes faibles. -- Ragala Khalid

Des mots simples, quand ils sont bien utilisés, font faire à des gens ordinaires des choses extraordinaires. -- Khaled TANGAO

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)

In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. -- Albert Einstein

We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking

I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh

Life is about making an impact, not making an income. --Kevin Kruse

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong

Opportunities don’t happen, you create them. ~Chris Grosser