Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world? -- Steve Jobs, to John Sculley (former Pepsi executive)
A person won't retain proficiency at a task unless he or she has at one time learned to perform that task very rapidly. Learning research demonstrates that the skills of people who become accurate but not fast deteriorate much sooner than the skills of people who become both accurate and fast. -- Philip Greenspun
Let me try to get this straight: Lisp is a language for describing algorithms. This was JohnMcCarthy's original purpose, anyway: to build something more convenient than a Turing machine. Lisp is not about file, socket or GUI programming - Lisp is about expressive power. (For example, you can design multiple object systems for Lisp, in Lisp. Or implement the now-fashionable AOP. Or do arbitrary transformations on parsed source code.) If you don't value expressive power, Lisp ain't for you. I, personally, would prefer Lisp to not become mainstream: this would necessarily involve a dumbing down. -- VladimirSlepnev
The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: "I did not have time." -- WestHost weekly newsletter 14 Feb 2003
The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you get a round one. -- Douglas Crockford (Author of JSON and JsLint)
Revolutions come from standing on the shoulders of giants and facing in a better direction. -- Alan Kay
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart
Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. ~Francis Chan