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 programmers use their brains, but good guidelines save us having to think out every case. -- Francis Glassborow

C’s great for what it’s great for. -- Ben Hoyts (micropledge)

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. -- William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. -- Brian Kernigan

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. -- Frank Lloyd Wright

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain

Education costs money. But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser