All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection. -- Butler Lampson

A society that puts equality -- in the sense of equality of outcome -- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. -- Milton Friedman (Thomas Sowell: A Conflict of Visions, p130)

And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. -- Joel Spolsky

And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. -- Joel Spolsky

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

Everything that can be invented has been invented. -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. ~Francis Chan

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra