Mastering isn’t a survival instinct; it’s an urge to excel. Mastering is one of the experiences that delineates us from animals. It is striving to be more tomorrow than we are today; to perfectly pitch the ball over home plate; to craft the perfect sentence in an article; to open the oven and feel the warm, richly-scented cloud telling you dinner is going to be absolutely extraordinary. We humans crave perfection, to be masters of our domain, to distinguish ourselves by sheer skill and prowess. -- Joesgoals.com

A person won't become proficient at something until he or she has done it many times. In other words., if you want someone to be really good at building a software system, he or she will have to have built 10 or more systems of that type. -- Philip Greenspun

It's like a condom; I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. -- some chick in Alien vs. Predator, when asked why she always carries a gun

You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. -- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)

I had to learn how to teach less, so that more could be learned. -- Tim Gallwey, The inner game of work

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

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~Anonymous

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.~ Anonymous

What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable. ~Anonymous

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein