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)

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

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. -- Mary Ellen Kelly

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. -- Mary Ellen Kelly

Lisp programmers know the value of everything but the cost of nothing. -- Alan J. Perlis

Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and "great thinking". It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice. -- Steven Den Beste

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. ~Mark Caine

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou

Your problem isn’t the problem. Your reaction is the problem. ~Anonymous