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)

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Revolutions come from standing on the shoulders of giants and facing in a better direction. -- Alan Kay

There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. -- C. A. R. Hoare

To solve your problems you must learn new skills, adapt new thought patterns, and become a different person than you were before that problem. God has crafted you for success. In the middle of every adversity lie your best opportunities. Discover it, build upon it and move forward in your journey to live an extraordinary life. You owe it to yourself to live a great life. Don’t let negative thoughts pull you down. Be grateful and open to learn and grow. -- http://secretsofstudying.com/

The problem is that small examples fail to convince, and large examples are too big to follow. -- Steve Yegge.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein