1 - Creativity and innovation always build on the past. 2 - The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it. 3 - Free societies enable the future by limiting the past. 4 - Ours is less and less a free society. -- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.

But what is it good for? -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968

And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. -- Joel Spolsky

I’d rather write programs to write programs than write programs. -- Richard Sites

Have you ever noticed that when you sit down to write something, half the ideas that end up in it are ones you thought of while writing it? The same thing happens with software. Working to implement one idea gives you more ideas. -- Paul Graham, The other road ahead.

The proof is by reductio ad absurdum, and reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician’s finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game. -- G. H. Hardy

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar

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

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill