1 - Creativity and innovation always build on the past. 2 - The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it. 3 - Free societies enable the future by limiting the past. 4 - Ours is less and less a free society. -- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.
A guideline in the process of stepwise refinement should be the principle to decompose decisions as much as possible, to untangle aspects which are only seemingly interdependent, and to defer those decisions which concern details of representation as long as possible. -- Niklaus Wirth
You can have premature generalization as well as premature optimization. -- Bjarne Stroustrup
My dream is that people adopt it on its own merits. We're not trying to bend Ruby on Rails to fit the enterprise, we're encouraging enterprises to bend to Ruby on Rails. Come if you like it, stay away if you don't. We're not going head over heels to accommodate the enterprise or to lure them away from Java. That's how you end up with Java, if you start bending to special interest groups. -- David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby On Rails' creator)
Its a shame that the students of our generation grew up with windows and mice because that tainted our mindset not to think in terms of powerful tools. Some of us are just so tainted that we will never recover. -- Jeffrey Mark Siskind in comp.lang.lisp
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
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. –Beverly Sills
Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou