Write it properly first. It's easier to make a correct program fast, than to make a fast program correct. -- http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/

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)

All creativity is an extended form of a joke. -- Alan Kay

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot. -- Eric S. Raymond

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -- Benjamin Franklin

The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. -- Larry Wall (Programming Perl)

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~Bruce Lee

If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it — teach yourself to be impatient. ~Gurbaksh Chahal

People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. ~Tony Robbins

It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln