An expert is, according to my working definition "someone who doesn't need to look up answers to easy questions". -- Eric Lippert.

Hence my urgent advice to all of you to reject the morals of the bestseller society and to find, to start with, your reward in your own fun. This is quite feasible, for the challenge of simplification is so fascinating that, if we do our job properly, we shall have the greatest fun in the world. -- E. W. Dijkstra, On the nature of computing science.

What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's "worth?" The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will. -- Paul Graham

If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. -- Alan Kay

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. -- author unknown (quoted in `Robust Systems', Gerald Jay Suseman)

Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline. -- Bill Clinton

Fortune sides with him who dares. ~Virgil

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~Anonymous

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. ~Mark Caine

You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey