All Quotes

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

By the time the Leaning Tower of Pisa was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.
-- Ken Iverson

To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.
-- A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.
-- William Faulkner

He prays well who is so absorbed with God that he does not know he is praying.
-- Francois de Sales (1567-1622)

I deliberately look for colorful people. They're very right for theatre. Theatre has to be theatrical. If you can get color into the accountant, you've got something. Write the whole thing first and then say he's an accountant. That's a very wacky accountant, but so what? Theatricality feeds and challenges the actor, the director, and the designers.
-- Lanford Wilson

It is a luxury to be understood.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- Professor Lowd, instructor, Ohio University

Men have become the tools of their tools.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
-- Truman Capote

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson

For a small reward, a man will hurry away on a long journey; while for eternal life, many will hardly take a single step.
-- Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)

There's nothing to be ashamed of in coming up with the obvious, especially when nobody else is coming up with it.
-- Meir "Manny" Lehman

The fantastic thing about the theatre is that it can make something be seen that's invisible, and that's where my interest in theatre is- that you can be watching this thing happening with actors and costumes and light and set and language, and even plot, and something emerges from beyond that, and that's the image part that I'm looking for, that sort of added dimension.
-- Sam Shepard

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-- Rich Cook

A play's an interpretation. It is not a report. And that is the beginning of its poetry because, in order to interpret, you have to distort toward a symbolic construction of what happened, and as that distortion takes place, you begin to leave out and overemphasize and consequently deliver up life as a unity rather than as a chaos, and any such attempt, the more intense it is, the more poetic it becomes.
-- Arthur Miller

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau

The success of a play, especially one's first success, is somewhat like pushing against a door which is suddenly opened that was always securely shut until then. For myself, the experience was invigorating. It suddenly seemed that the audience was a mass of blood relations, and I sensed a warmth in the world that had not been there before. It made it possible to dream of daring more and risking more.
-- Arthur Miller

A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
-- Somerset Maugham

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
-- Jeff Raskin

A comprehended god is no god.
-- St. John Chrysostom (345-407)

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein

Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

The only completely consistent people are the dead.
-- Aldous Huxley

There is nothing new in art except talent.
-- Anton Chekhov

If a gun is hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.
-- Anton Chekhov

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein

In the theatre the audience wants to be surprised- but by things that they expect.
-- Tristan Bernard

In love there is but little rest.
-- Chaucer

An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.
-- Edwin Booth

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
-- Ernest Hemingway

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

All the world would be Christian if they were taught the pure Gospel of Christ!
-- Thomas Jefferson

The universe is one of God's thoughts.
-- Friedrich Schiller

We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to face it.
-- Thornton Wilder

Whatever you do will be insignifigant, but it is very important that you do it.
-- Ghandi

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
-- Henry David Thoreau

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
-- Robert Frost

If man is not made for God, why is he not happy except in God? If man is made for God, why is he so opposed to God?
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.
-- Peter Shaffer

Going to church does not make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonald's makes you a hamburger.
-- Anonymous

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
-- Somerset Maugham

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
-- Jack B. Sowards, "Spock", Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
-- Thomas Jefferson

He who hasn't hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does as an adult has no brain.
-- John Moore

Who so loves believes the impossible.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose.
-- J. Martin Kohe

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-- Oscar Levant

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
-- Lily Tomlin

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
-- Leo Tolstoy

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
-- Isaac Asimov

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clark

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
-- Thomas A. Edison

We ought not be over anxious to encourage innovation, in case of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established and it is understood.
-- C.C. Colton

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
-- Oscar Wilde

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
-- John Wesley

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
-- Herbert Henry Asquith

No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
-- Thomas Jefferson

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
-- Oscar Wilde

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
-- Andrew Tannenbaum

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- F.P. Jones

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy

The most important thing in a programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
-- Donald E. Knuth

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
-- Plutarch

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charles Schultz

If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything.
-- Fred Menger

Information is the currency of democracy.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Information is the oxygen of the modern age.
-- Ronald Reagan

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
-- Jeremy S. Anderson

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-- Thomas A. Edison

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
-- M.C. Escher

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
-- Wernher VonBraun

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
-- Bill Vaughan

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours.
-- Stanley Kubrick

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
-- Charles Darwin

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
-- Alan Turing

The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
-- Donald E. Knuth

God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
-- Paul Dirac

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.
-- Jules Feiffer

Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.
-- George Iles

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
-- Ralph W. Sockman

Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.
-- Arnold Edinborough

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.
-- C.A.R. Hoare

There was never a great genius without a tincture of madness.
-- Aristotle

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
-- Albert Einstein

Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.
-- Herbert Westren Turnbull

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
-- Confucius

Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.
-- Lord Chesterfield

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
-- Samuel Johnson

Since when was genius found respectable?
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
-- Eden Phillpotts

War is just to those to whom war is necessary.
-- Titus Livius

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
-- Goethe

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
-- Daniel Webster

You're bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything.
-- Donald E. Knuth

I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
-- Galileo Galilei

Setting loose on the battlefield weapons that are able to learn may be one of the biggest mistakes mankind has ever made. It could also be one of the last.
-- Richard Forsyth

There are too many people, and too few human beings.
-- Robert Zend

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labelled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!
-- W.J. Reichmann

Fast, fat computers breed slow, lazy programmers.
-- Robert Hummel

Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
-- Eugene Wigner

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.
-- Stewart Brand

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions -- the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.
-- Freeman Dyson

A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author.
-- S.C. Johnson

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. Wuld

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am 50, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things -- including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown-up.
-- C.S. Lewis

I have one very basic rule when it comes to "good ideas". A good idea is not an idea that solves a problem cleanly. A good idea is an idea that solves several things at the same time. The mark of good coding is not that the program does what you want, it's that it also does something that you didn't start out wanting.
-- Linus Torvalds

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.
-- Niklaus Wirth

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
-- Emily Post

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
-- Edward Teller

Any fool can count the seeds in an apple. Only God can count all the apples in one seed.
-- Robert Schuller

Ability is nothing without opportunity.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.
-- Jascha Heifetz

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
-- James Stephens

I might repeat to myself... a list of quotations from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.
-- Dorothy Parker

Beware that you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
-- John Wesley

I take my wife everywhere I go. She always finds her way back.
-- Henny Youngman

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
-- Albert Einstein

The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.
-- Augustine

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
-- John Fowles

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
-- Rene Descartes

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.
-- William Ralph Inge

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.
-- Johnny Carson

Bing Crosby sings like all people think they sing in the shower.
-- Dinah Shore

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
-- Leslie Lamport

People will frighten you about a graduation....They use words you don't hear often... "And we wish you Godspeed." It is a warning, Godpeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices.
-- Bill Cosby

People say New Yorkers can't get along. Not true. I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine.
-- David Letterman

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
-- Bill Maher

In science we are really good at disproving things and are very poor at proving things. Theories like the Theory of Relativity go on and on because no one can think of anything better.
-- Richard Zayre

The triple is the most exciting play in baseball...Home runs win a lot of games, but I never understood why fans are so obsessed with them.
-- Hank Aaron

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.
-- Steven Wright

I wrote a few children's books... not on purpose.
-- Steven Wright

I wrote a song, but I can't read music so I don't know what it is. Every once in a while I'll be listening to the radio and I say, "I think I might have written that."
-- Steven Wright

I'm kinda tired. I was up all night trying to round off infinity.
-- Steven Wright

I like to go to art museums and name the untitled paintings... Boy With Pail... Kitten On Fire.
-- Steven Wright

Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against truth.
-- Thomas Huxley

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
-- Orson Welles

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

How to make God laugh: Tell him your future plans.
-- Woody Allen

God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more truly than He is imagined.
-- Augustine

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
-- Charles Darwin

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
-- Stephen W. Hawking

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
-- John Adams

Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today, and is coming back tomorrow.
-- Theodore Epp

Preach the gospel everyday; if necessary, use words.
-- St. Francis of Assisi

Today Jesus Christ is being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere example. He is that, but he is infinitely more; He is salvation itself, He is the Gospel of God.
-- Oswald Chambers

All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.
-- Oswald Chambers

Heroes are not the ones that never fail, but the ones who never give up.
-- Ed Cole

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

A little lie is like a little pregnancy; it doesn't take long before everyone knows.
-- C.S. Lewis

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man.
-- Abraham Lincoln

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.
-- Abraham Lincoln

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

The Holy Spirit is not a blessing from God, He is God.
-- Colin Urquhart

It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. Do not ever let anyone claim to be a true American patriot if they ever attempt to separate Religion from politics.
-- George Washington

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
-- Bill Watterson, cartoonist, "Calvin and Hobbes"

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
-- Ray Bradbury

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
-- Andre Gide

Never spend your money before you have it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
-- Agnes Repplier

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
-- W. H. Auden

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
-- Bertrand Russell

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
-- Henry David Thoreau

I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.
-- William Blake

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
-- Philip G. Hamerton

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-- Isaac Asimov

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
-- Unknown

In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it.
-- Unknown

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
-- Oscar Wilde

America's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness, is our belief in second chances, our belief that we can always start over, that things can be made better.
-- Anthony Walton

America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
-- Laurence J. Peter

Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
-- Dan Rather

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.
-- George Will

We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other.
-- Johnathan Swift

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together ...
-- Carl Zwanzig

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
-- John von Neumann

Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
-- Charles Schultz

Hungarian notation is the tactical nuclear weapon of source code obfuscation techniques.
-- Roedy Green

Significantly, no one has ever proved that the brain is a *good* computer. It seems to run some tasks like visual recognition better than our existing machines, but it is terrible at math, prone to errors, susceptible to distraction, and it requires half its uptime for food, sleep, and maintenance.
-- Dr. Richard Wallace

I always say, engineers should beware of questions that begin, "Have you ever tried..." or "Why don't you just...". A good idea is one that has a high ratio of conception time to implementation time. A quick idea that takes a long time to implement is never a pleasant experience for the hapless engineer.
-- Dr. Richard Wallace

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)

A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)

Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
-- Bob Dylan

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
-- Fred Hoyle

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-- Albert Einstein

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
-- Carl Sagan

As soon as we started programming, we found out to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes

Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it.
-- Linus Torvalds

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true.
-- Professor Robert Silensky, instructor, California University

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
-- Anonymous

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
-- Attributed to The Apostle Paul, Hebrews 11:1

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
-- Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.
-- Arthur Miller, "Joe Keller", All My Sons

Life is wasted on the living.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
-- Frederick P. Brooks, IEEE Computer, "No Silver Bullet"

One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
-- Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (As we shall see later, this very tractability has its own problems.)
-- Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.
-- Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

Trivia rarely affect efficiency. Are all the machinations worth it, when their primary effect is to make the code less readable?
-- Kernighan and Plauger, The Elements of Programming Style

As a wise programmer once said, "Floating point numbers are like sandpiles: every time you move one, you lose a little sand and you pick up a little dirt." And after a few computations, things can get pretty dirty.
-- Kernighan and Plauger, The Elements of Programming Style

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
-- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Men of few words are the best men.
-- William Shakespeare, Henry V

The quality of mercy is not strained...
-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
-- The Apostle Paul, Romans 1:20

If I see an ending, I can work backward.
-- Arthur Miller

Superior ability breeds superior ambition.
-- Coon and Wilbur, "Spock", Star Trek, The Original Series, "Space Seed"

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.
-- George W. Bush, 2001

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of freedom.
-- John F. Kennedy, 1961

If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself.
-- John F. Kennedy, 1963

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1793

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test.
-- George W. Bush, September 11, 2001

Let the boy win his spurs.
-- Attributed to Edward III, 1346
(Replying to a suggestion that he should send reinforcements to his son, the Black Prince, during the Battle of Crecy.)

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), The Humble Programmer

Programming will remain very difficult, because once we have freed ourselves from the circumstantial cumbersomeness, we will find ourselves free to tackle the problems that are now well beyond our programming capacity.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), The Humble Programmer

Yea from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Hamlet

A mission statement is defined as "a long awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly." All good companies have one.
-- Scott Adams, 1996, The Dilbert Principle

There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
-- Alfred Korzybski

The stupid neither forgive nor forget, the naive forgive and forget, the wise forgive but do not forget.
-- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-- Mark Twain

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
-- William Butler Yeats

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficency and demoralisation.
-- Caius Petronius, 66 AD

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publius Syrus

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
-- Bill Gates

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
-- Lao Tsu

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
-- Anne Frank

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
-- Abelson and Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs