I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise. -- Edsger Dijkstra

Simplicity takes effort-- genius, even. -- Paul Graham

The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you get a round one. -- Douglas Crockford (Author of JSON and JsLint)

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution. -- Robert Sewell

The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. But self-interested and ambitious people are in positions of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon's tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check. -- Tim Harford

Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it. ~Jane Smiley