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)

An interpreter raises the machine to the level of the user program; a compiler lowers the user program to the level of the machine language. -- SICP

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. -- Galileo Galilei

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are always cocksure and the intelligent are always filled with doubt. -- Bertrand Russell

We are the sum of our behaviours; excellence therefore is not an act but a habit. -- Aristotle.

The only problems we can really solve in a satisfactory manner are those that finally admit a nicely factored solution. -- E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart

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

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar

15.Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll