Its a shame that the students of our generation grew up with windows and mice because that tainted our mindset not to think in terms of powerful tools. Some of us are just so tainted that we will never recover. -- Jeffrey Mark Siskind in comp.lang.lisp

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. -- William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)

Have you ever noticed that when you sit down to write something, half the ideas that end up in it are ones you thought of while writing it? The same thing happens with software. Working to implement one idea gives you more ideas. -- Paul Graham, The other road ahead.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. -- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)

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

Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word. -- Nassim Taleb

Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ~Herman Melville