I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra

Getting back to failing early, I've learned it's important to completely fail. Get fired. Shoot the project, then burn its corpse. Melt the CVS repository and microwave the backup CDs. When things go wrong, I've often tried to play the hero from start to finish. Guess what? Some projects are doomed no matter what. Some need skills I don't possess. And some need a fresh face. -- Reginald Braithwaite

There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination. -- Hara Estroff Marano.

I had to learn how to teach less, so that more could be learned. -- Tim Gallwey, The inner game of work

You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. -- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)

Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. -- Eric S. Raymond, How To Be A Hacker

The mind is everything. What you think you become. –Buddha

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

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. ~Thomas Jefferson

Opportunities don’t happen, you create them. ~Chris Grosser