I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't tell is whether they have any kind of taste." -- Paul Graham

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

Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible. -- Alan Kay

La haine est une liqueur précieuse, un poison plus cher que celui des Borgia, - car il est fait avec notre sang, notre santé, notre sommeil, et les deux tiers de notre amour! Il faut en être avare! -- Charles Baudelaire, Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs.

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

The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. But self-interested and ambitious people are in positions of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon's tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check. -- Tim Harford

Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know, and thous shalt progress. –Maimonides

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it. ~Washington Irving

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. ~Truman Capote