Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C.S. Lewis

A witty saying proves nothing -- Voltaire

A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longuer anything to add, but when there is no longuer anything to take away. -- Antoine de St Exupery.

This challenge, viz. the confrontation with the programming task, is so unique that this novel experience can teach us a lot about ourselves. It should deepen our understanding of the processes of design and creation, it should give us better control over the task of organizing our thoughts. If it did not do so, to my taste we should no deserve the computer at all! It has allready taught us a few lessons, and the one I have chosen to stress in this talk is the following. We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremenduous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsec limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers. -- E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer

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

Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM, which is more than any application will ever need. -- Microsoft, on the development of Windows NT, 1992

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.~ Anatole France

I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing. ~Martha Stewart

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absense of fear. ~Mark Twain

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan