We control complexity by building abstractions that hide details when appropriate. We control complexity by establishing conventional interfaces that enable us to construct systems by combining standard, well-understood pieces in a ``mix and match'' way. We control complexity by establishing new languages for describing a design, each of which emphasizes particular aspects of the design and deemphasizes others. -- Alan J. Perlis

Hire people smarter than you. Work with people smarter than you. Listen to them. Let them lead you. Take the blame for all failures, give away the credit for all successes. -- How to fail: 25 secrets learned through failure

Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM, which is more than any application will ever need. -- Microsoft, on the development of Windows NT, 1992

A hacker on a roll may be able to produce–in a period of a few months–something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other workers, or more. -- Peter Seebach

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)

Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle

You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan

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

Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.~ Anonymous