The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Remember that you are humans in the first place and only after that programmers. -- Alexandru Vancea

I would rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist who proves to be right. The former sometimes wins, but never the latter. -- "Hoots"

We remember what we learn when we care about performing better and when we believe that what we have been asked to do is representative of reality. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Remember, always be yourself ... unless you suck! -- Joss Whedon

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach

A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done. ~Vince Lombardi

We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it. ~Washington Irving