If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. -- Official definition of "duck typing"

Courage is grace under pressure. -- Ernest Hemingway

When you’ve got the code all ripped apart, it’s like a car that’s all disassembled. You’ve got all the parts tying all over your garage and you have to replace the broken part or the car will never run. It’s not fun until the code gets back to the baseline again. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra

The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course when they find better evidence. The quest for management magic and breakthrough ideas is overrated; being a master of the obvious is underrated. Jim Maloney is right: Work is an overrated activity -- Bob Sutton

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense. -- E.W. Dijkstra

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. –Beverly Sills

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. ~Steve Jobs