Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word. -- Nassim Taleb

When you’ve got the code all ripped apart, it’s like a car that’s all disassembled. You’ve got all the parts tying all over your garage and you have to replace the broken part or the car will never run. It’s not fun until the code gets back to the baseline again. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. -- Alfred North Whitehead (Introduction to Mathematics)

Humans aren't rational -- they rationalize. And I don't just mean "some of them" or "other people". I'm talking about everyone. We have a "logic engine" in our brains, but for the most part, it's not the one in the driver's seat -- instead it operates after the fact, generating rationalizations and excuses for our behavior. -- Paul Buchheit

Understanding why C++ is the way it is helps a programmer use it well. A deep understanding of a tool is essential for an expert craftsman. -- Bjarne Stroustrap

In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to find out what it could be true of. -- George Miller

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. ~David Brinkley

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 number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors. ~Napoleon Hill

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all. ~Dale Carnegie