Well then. How could you possibly live without automated refactoring tools? How else could you coordinate the caterpillar-like motions of all Java’s identical tiny legs, its thousands of similar parts? I’ll tell you how: Ruby is a butterfly. -- Stevey, Refactoring Trilogy, Part 1.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -- Thomas Edison

What do Americans look for in a car? I've heard many answers when I've asked this question. The answers include excellent safety ratings, great gas mileage, handling, and cornering ability, among others. I don't believe any of these. That's because the first principle of the Culture Code is that the only effective way to understand what people truly mean is to ignore what they say. This is not to suggest that people intentionally lie or misrepresent themselves. What it means is that, when asked direct questions about their interests and preferences, people tend to give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear. Again, this is not because they intend to mislead. It is because people respond to these questions with their cortexes, the parts of their brains that control intelligence rather than emotion or instinct. They ponder a question, they process a question, and when they deliver an answer, it is the product of deliberation. They believe they are telling the truth. A lie detector would confirm this. In most cases, however, they aren't saying what they mean. -- The culture code.

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS. -- Alan Kay

A hacker on a roll may be able to produce–in a period of a few months–something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other workers, or more. -- Peter Seebach

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. ~Mark Twain

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~Ralph Nader

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. ~Albert Einstein

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt