Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. -- Ancient Eastern adage

Omit needless words. -- William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)

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

Having large case statements in an object-oriented language is a sure sign your design is flawed. -- [Fixing architecture flaws in Rails' ORM]

Functional programming is to algorithms as the ubiquitous little black dress is to women's fashion. -- Mark Tarver (of "The bipolar Lisp programmer" fame)

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)

If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough. –Oprah Winfrey

Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them. ~Vaibhav Shah

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. –Booker T. Washington

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci