Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. -- Mark Twain

One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that–lacking zero–they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth

Always dive down into a problem and get your hands on the deepest issue behind the problem. All other considerations are to dismissed as "engineering details"; they can be sorted out after the basic problem has been solved. -- Chris Crawford

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. -- Bill Gates

This challenge, viz. the confrontation with the programming task, is so unique that this novel experience can teach us a lot about ourselves. It should deepen our understanding of the processes of design and creation, it should give us better control over the task of organizing our thoughts. If it did not do so, to my taste we should no deserve the computer at all! It has allready taught us a few lessons, and the one I have chosen to stress in this talk is the following. We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremenduous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsec limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers. -- E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. -- Frederick P. Brooks, No Sliver Bullet.

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

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. ~Truman Capote