1 - Creativity and innovation always build on the past. 2 - The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it. 3 - Free societies enable the future by limiting the past. 4 - Ours is less and less a free society. -- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.
And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. -- Joel Spolsky
All creativity is an extended form of a joke. -- Alan Kay
Revolutions come from standing on the shoulders of giants and facing in a better direction. -- Alan Kay
Simplicity and pragmatism beat complexity and theory any day. -- Dennis (blog comment)
A CS professor once explained recursion as follows: A child couldn't sleep, so her mother told her a story about a little frog, who couldn't sleep, so the frog's mother told her a story about a little bear, who couldn't sleep, so the bear's mother told her a story about a little weasel... who fell asleep. ...and the little bear fell asleep; ...and the little frog fell asleep; ...and the child fell asleep. -- everything2.com
The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them. ~Denis Watiley
Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them. ~Vaibhav Shah
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~Ralph Nader
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