Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for. -- Greek philosopher Epicurus

The president was visiting NASA headquarters and stopped to talk to a man who was holding a mop. “And what do you do?” he asked. The man, a janitor, replied, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon, sir.” -- The little book of leadership

Abstraction is a form of data compression: absolutely necessary, because human short-term memory is so small, but the critically important aspect of abstraction is the algorithm that gets you from the name back to the "uncompressed" details. -- Bruce Wilder (blog post comment)

Lisp programmers know the value of everything but the cost of nothing. -- Alan J. Perlis

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. If you compete with slaves you become a slave. -- Paul Graham and Norbert Weiner, respectively

Good programmers use their brains, but good guidelines save us having to think out every case. -- Francis Glassborow

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama

You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing. ~Philippos

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain