Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts. -- Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10

To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. -- Paul Graham.

There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. -- C. A. R. Hoare

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

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

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -- Thomas Edison

Fortune sides with him who dares. ~Virgil

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. ~John D. Rockefeller

The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself--the invisible battles inside all of us--that's where it's at. –Jesse Owens