XML wasn't designed to be edited by humans on a regular basis. -- Guido van Rossum
To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. -- Paul Graham.
An expert is, according to my working definition "someone who doesn't need to look up answers to easy questions". -- Eric Lippert.
Courage is grace under pressure. -- Ernest Hemingway
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
Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts. -- Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it. ~Henry Ford
It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker