There really is no learning without doing. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

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

Have you ever noticed that when you sit down to write something, half the ideas that end up in it are ones you thought of while writing it? The same thing happens with software. Working to implement one idea gives you more ideas. -- Paul Graham, The other road ahead.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. -- William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)

In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. -- Albert Einstein

640K ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates, 1981

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

Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life. ~Dr. APJ Kalam

Fortune sides with him who dares. ~Virgil

Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb