A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure. -- Hugh Kingsmill

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)

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. -- Thomas Edison

I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. -- Alan Kay

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot. -- Eric S. Raymond

What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! ... When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. ... Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice. ~Wayne Dyer

I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks

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