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

The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It’s to create more leaders. -- Ralph Nader

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. -- E. W. Dijkstra

New eyes have X-ray vision. [someone that hasn't written it is more likely to spot the bug. "someone" can be you after a break] -- William S. Annis

A person won't retain proficiency at a task unless he or she has at one time learned to perform that task very rapidly. Learning research demonstrates that the skills of people who become accurate but not fast deteriorate much sooner than the skills of people who become both accurate and fast. -- Philip Greenspun

C++ is like teenage sex: Everybody is talking about it all the time, only few are really doing it. -- unknown

It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings. –Ann Landers

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. ~Albert Einstein

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time. ~George Bernard Shaw

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle