Mastering isn’t a survival instinct; it’s an urge to excel. Mastering is one of the experiences that delineates us from animals. It is striving to be more tomorrow than we are today; to perfectly pitch the ball over home plate; to craft the perfect sentence in an article; to open the oven and feel the warm, richly-scented cloud telling you dinner is going to be absolutely extraordinary. We humans crave perfection, to be masters of our domain, to distinguish ourselves by sheer skill and prowess. -- Joesgoals.com

Have you ever noticed that when you sit down to write something, half the ideas that end up in it are ones you thought of while writing it? The same thing happens with software. Working to implement one idea gives you more ideas. -- Paul Graham, The other road ahead.

Chance favors the prepared mind. -- Louis Pasteur

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

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity. -- W.A. Wulf

Just like carpentry, measure twice cut once. -- Super-sizing YouTube with Python (Mike Solomon, [email protected])

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all. ~Dale Carnegie

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne