It was Edison who said ‘1% inspiration, 99% perspiration’. That may have been true a hundred years ago. These days it's ‘0.01% inspiration, 99.99% perspiration’, and the inspiration is the easy part. -- Linux Torvalds

To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. -- Paul Graham.

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

I would rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist who proves to be right. The former sometimes wins, but never the latter. -- "Hoots"

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. -- Martin Golding

We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~Bruce Lee

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

Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine

I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing. ~Martha Stewart