If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

Humans aren't rational -- they rationalize. And I don't just mean "some of them" or "other people". I'm talking about everyone. We have a "logic engine" in our brains, but for the most part, it's not the one in the driver's seat -- instead it operates after the fact, generating rationalizations and excuses for our behavior. -- Paul Buchheit

The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. But self-interested and ambitious people are in positions of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon's tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check. -- Tim Harford

There is one meaning [for static in C]: a global variable that is invisible outside the current scope, be it a function or a file. -- Paolo Bonzini

Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. -- Eric S. Raymond, How To Be A Hacker

Abstraction is a form of data compression: absolutely necessary, because human short-term memory is so small, but the critically important aspect of abstraction is the algorithm that gets you from the name back to the "uncompressed" details. -- Bruce Wilder (blog post comment)

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.~ Oscar Wilde

Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them. ~Denis Watiley