The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso

Just like carpentry, measure twice cut once. -- Super-sizing YouTube with Python (Mike Solomon, [email protected])

Some people suggest that machines would be friendlier if input could be in a natural language. But natural language is probably the worst kind of input because it can be quite ambiguous. The process of retrieving information from the computer would be so time-consuming that you would be better off spending that time getting the information directly from an expert. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

A guideline in the process of stepwise refinement should be the principle to decompose decisions as much as possible, to untangle aspects which are only seemingly interdependent, and to defer those decisions which concern details of representation as long as possible. -- Niklaus Wirth

We remember what we learn when we care about performing better and when we believe that what we have been asked to do is representative of reality. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan

The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors. ~Napoleon Hill

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker

The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors. ~Napoleon Hill