The problem is that small examples fail to convince, and large examples are too big to follow. -- Steve Yegge.

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)

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. -- Mark Twain

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense. -- E.W. Dijkstra

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. -- Eric Raymond

Resume writing is just like dating, or applying for a bank loan, in that nobody wants you if you're desperate. -- Steve Yegge.

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice. ~Wayne Dyer

Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen

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

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing. ~Dale Carnegie