Students should be evaluated on how well they can achieve the goals they strived to achieve within a realistic context. Students need to learn to do things, not know things. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

We control complexity by building abstractions that hide details when appropriate. We control complexity by establishing conventional interfaces that enable us to construct systems by combining standard, well-understood pieces in a ``mix and match'' way. We control complexity by establishing new languages for describing a design, each of which emphasizes particular aspects of the design and deemphasizes others. -- Alan J. Perlis

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (attributed)

Simplicity takes effort-- genius, even. -- Paul Graham

An expert is, according to my working definition "someone who doesn't need to look up answers to easy questions". -- Eric Lippert.

Seize any opportunity, or anything that looks like opportunity. They are rare, much rarer than you think... -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Black Swan".

Good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them. ~Anonymous

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman

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

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller