The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. -- Bertrand Russell

What is truth? -- Pontius Pilate

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C.S. Lewis

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)

We control complexity by building abstractions that hide details when appropriate. We control complexity by establishing conventional interfaces that enable us to construct systems by combining standard, well-understood pieces in a ``mix and match'' way. We control complexity by establishing new languages for describing a design, each of which emphasizes particular aspects of the design and deemphasizes others. -- Alan J. Perlis

Functional programming is to algorithms as the ubiquitous little black dress is to women's fashion. -- Mark Tarver (of "The bipolar Lisp programmer" fame)

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly. ~Proverb

You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ~Herman Melville