The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Opportunities that present themselves to you are the consequence -- at least partially -- of being in the right place at the right time. They tend to present themselves when you're not expecting it -- and often when you are engaged in other activities that would seem to preclude you from pursuing them. And they come and go quickly -- if you don't jump all over an opportunity, someone else generally will and it will vanish. -- Marc Andreessen (http://blog.pmarca.com/)

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. -- Eric Raymond

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. -- Frederick P. Brooks, No Sliver Bullet.

We remember what we learn when we care about performing better and when we believe that what we have been asked to do is representative of reality. -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education

C++ is like teenage sex: Everybody is talking about it all the time, only few are really doing it. -- unknown

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. ~Robert Collier

If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on. –Sheryl Sandberg

If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren

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