Show, don't tell. -- unknown

This challenge, viz. the confrontation with the programming task, is so unique that this novel experience can teach us a lot about ourselves. It should deepen our understanding of the processes of design and creation, it should give us better control over the task of organizing our thoughts. If it did not do so, to my taste we should no deserve the computer at all! It has allready taught us a few lessons, and the one I have chosen to stress in this talk is the following. We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremenduous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsec limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers. -- E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. -- Edsger Dijkstra

Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline. -- Bill Clinton

The most damaging phrase in the language is, It's always been done that way. -- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~Ralph Nader

All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. ~Michael John Bobak

Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama

If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got. ~Anonymous