It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger Dijkstra

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder. -- Erik Naggum

I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra

Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones. -- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)

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

A witty saying proves nothing -- Voltaire

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~Ralph Nader

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.~ Oscar Wilde

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all. ~Dale Carnegie