A person won't become proficient at something until he or she has done it many times. In other words., if you want someone to be really good at building a software system, he or she will have to have built 10 or more systems of that type. -- Philip Greenspun

Hence my urgent advice to all of you to reject the morals of the bestseller society and to find, to start with, your reward in your own fun. This is quite feasible, for the challenge of simplification is so fascinating that, if we do our job properly, we shall have the greatest fun in the world. -- E. W. Dijkstra, On the nature of computing science.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. -- Goethe

There really is no learning without doing. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. -- Cicero

No matter how much you plan you’re likely to get half wrong anyway. So don’t do the ‘paralysis through analysis’ thing. That only slows progress and saps morale. -- 37 Signal, Getting real

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. ~Albert Einstein

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. –Aristotle