Hence my urgent advice to all of you to reject the morals of the bestseller society and to find, to start with, your reward in your own fun. This is quite feasible, for the challenge of simplification is so fascinating that, if we do our job properly, we shall have the greatest fun in the world. -- E. W. Dijkstra, On the nature of computing science.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. -- Aristotle.

Students should be evaluated on how well they can achieve the goals they strived to achieve within a realistic context. Students need to learn to do things, not know things. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger Dijkstra

Abstraction is a form of data compression: absolutely necessary, because human short-term memory is so small, but the critically important aspect of abstraction is the algorithm that gets you from the name back to the "uncompressed" details. -- Bruce Wilder (blog post comment)

All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky. -- Joel Spolsky (The Law of Leaky Abstractions)

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. ~Michael John Bobak

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

If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar