To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A witty saying proves nothing -- Voltaire

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)

Good coders code, great reuse. -- http://www.catonmat.net

Humans differ from animals to the degree that they are not merely an end result of their conditioning, but are able to reflect on their experiences and strategies, and apply insight to make changes in the way they live to modify the outcome. -- SlideTrombone (comment on "Programming can ruin your life")

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. -- Frederick P. Brooks, No Sliver Bullet.

I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin

If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. ~Robert Collier

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it. ~Washington Irving