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
Ce n’est que par les beaux sentiments qu’on parvient à la fortune ! -- Charles Baudelaire, Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs.
Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM, which is more than any application will ever need. -- Microsoft, on the development of Windows NT, 1992
- If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change. - Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. - A prime candidate for natural deselection. -- [Ideas for flamewars]
All creativity is an extended form of a joke. -- Alan Kay
640K ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates, 1981
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.~ Oscar Wilde
If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh
Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out. ~John Wooden
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. ~Swami Vivekananda