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.
What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's "worth?" The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will. -- Paul Graham
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Rules of Optimization: Rule 1: Don’t do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don’t do it yet. -- M.A. Jackson
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -- Benjamin Franklin
The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course when they find better evidence. The quest for management magic and breakthrough ideas is overrated; being a master of the obvious is underrated. Jim Maloney is right: Work is an overrated activity -- Bob Sutton
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument. ~Anonymous
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. ~Anonymous
An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates