It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger Dijkstra
What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! ... When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. ... Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching.
Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex, intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple, stupid behavior. -- Dee Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age
Ce n'est que par les relations qu'on entretient entre nos différentes connaissances qu'elles nous restent accessibles. -- Shnuup, sur l'hypertexte (SELFHTML -> Introduction -> Definitions sur l'hypertexte)
We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking
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)
Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly. ~Proverb
If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary. ~Jim Rohn
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson