While I’ve always appreciated beautiful code, I share Jonathan’s concern about studying it too much. I think studying beauty in music and painting has led us to modern classical music and painting that the majority of us just don’t get. Beauty can be seen when it emerges, but isn’t something to strive for in isolation of a larger context. In the software world, the larger context would be the utility of the software to the end user. -- [A comment on a blog]
Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word. -- Nassim Taleb
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -- Ferris Bueller
It's like a condom; I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. -- some chick in Alien vs. Predator, when asked why she always carries a gun
A person won't become proficient at something until he or she has done it many times. In other words., if you want someone to be really good at building a software system, he or she will have to have built 10 or more systems of that type. -- Philip Greenspun
Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world? -- Steve Jobs, to John Sculley (former Pepsi executive)
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all. ~Dale Carnegie
Life is about making an impact, not making an income. --Kevin Kruse
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. ~Francis Chan
Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ~John R. Wooden