Quite a Quote!

John Stuart Mill: Collision with error

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if…
Andrew Singer: Art of debugging

“The art of debugging is figuring out what you really told your program to do rather than what you thought you told it to do.” —Andrew Singer.
Ruskin Bond: Red roses and French beans

“Red roses for young lovers. French beans for longstanding relationships.” —Ruskin Bond, author.
Howard Marks: Levered portfolios

“The magnification of gains and losses stemming from leverage is typically symmetrical: a given amount of leverage amplifies gains and losses similarly. But levered portfolios face a downside risk to which there isn’t a corresponding upside: the risk of ruin. The most important adage regarding leverage reminds us to ‘never forget the six-foot-tall person who…
Don Norman: Hardest part of design

“The hardest part of design is keeping features out.” —Don Norman.
Alan Kay: Change in perspective

“A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.” —Alan Kay, computer scientist.
James M Barrie: Diary

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” —James M. Barrie.
Dave Platt: Herding cats

“Managing senior programmers is like herding cats.” —Dave Platt.
Studs Terkel: Talk to one another

“I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.” —Studs Terkel, author and broadcaster.
Katherine Anne Porter: Past

“The past is never where you think you left it.” —Katherine Anne Porter, writer and activist.
Howard Marks: Optimism at the top, pessimism at the bottom

“The herd applies optimism at the top and pessimism at the bottom. Thus, to benefit, we must be skeptical of the optimism that thrives at the top, and skeptical of the pessimism that prevails at the bottom.” —Howard Marks.
Hal Borland: Knowing trees, knowing grass

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” —Hal Borland, author and journalist.
Annie Dillard: How we spend our lives

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” —Annie Dillard, author.
Mark Abley: Modern English

“Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.” —Mark Abley, writer and editor.
Leonard Cohen: Leafy life

“When your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.” —Leonard Cohen, Sisters of Mercy.
Alix Kates Shulman: Love, the hard way

“… most of us learned about love the hard way. Even warnings are probably useless, for somehow, despite the severest warnings of parents and friends, hundreds, thousands of women have forgotten themselves at the last minute and succumbed to the lies, promises, flatteries, or mere attentions of lusting, lovely men, landing themselves in complicated predicaments from which some of them never recovered…
Alan Kay: Computer science inverts the normal

“Computer science inverts the normal. In normal science, you’re given a world, and your job is to find out the rules. In computer science, you give the computer the rules, and it creates the world.” —Alan Kay.
Unknown: Willpower

“You don’t find willpower, you create it.” —UNKNOWN.
Bono: Hammer it into shape

“The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.” —Bono, musician and social activist.
Logan Pearsall Smith: Denunciation of the young

“The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of the blood.” —Logan Pearsall Smith.
J M Barrie: Humblest hour

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” —J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright.
Matt Groening: Love is a snowmobile

“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, which suddenly flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come.” —Matt Groening, Love is Hell.
Mary Lou Williams: Jazz, spirit of love

“Jazz arises from a spirit of love, it comes from the mind and heart and goes through the fingertips.” —Mary Lou Williams, pianist, arranger, and composer.
Seth Klarman: When to sell or buy

“There is only one valid rule for selling: all investments are for sale at the right price. Decisions to sell, like decisions to buy, must be based upon underlying business value. Exactly when to sell — or buy — depends on the alternative opportunities that are available. Should you hold for partial or complete value…
Rabindranath Tagore: Death

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” —Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate.
Peggy Joyce: Alimony

“Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them continues to pay for it.” —Peggy Joyce.
Sigmund Freud: What progress

“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.” —Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis.
Bill Vaughn: Suburbia

“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” — Bill Vaughn.
R E Shay: Rabbit’s foot

“Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember, it didn’t help the rabbit.” —R.E. Shay.
Samuel Johnson: Good and original

“Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.” —Samuel Johnson.
Paul Graham: Programming language

“A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you’ve already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.” —Paul Graham.
Publilius Syrus: Not every question deserves an answer

“It is not every question that deserves an answer.” —Publilius Syrus.
J R R Tolkien: Merrier world

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” —J.R.R. Tolkien.
Joseph Addison: Temper of the sufferer

“A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.” —Joseph Addison, essayist and poet.
Ellen Goodman: Graceful Exit

“There’s a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over — and to let go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every…
William Shakespeare: Suspicion

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” —William Shakespeare.
Henry Brook Adams: Friendship

“One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.” —Henry Brook Adams.
Duke Ellington: Deadline

“I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.” —Duke Ellington, jazz pianist, composer, and conductor.
Marie Ebner von Eschenbach: Rheumatism and true love

“We don’t believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.” —Marie Ebner von Eschenbach.
Dave Barry: Digestive system

“Your digestive system is your body’s Fun House, whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the Dark…
Hippocrates: Brain

“Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. … It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us…
Leonardo da Vinci: Easier to resist

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” —Leonardo da Vinci.
Robert C Martin: Encoded names

“Encoded names are seldom pronounceable and are easy to miss-type.” —Robert C. Martin.
Edward R Murrow: Dissent

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.” —Edward R. Murrow, journalist.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Attic of the brain

“You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best…
Thomas Aldrich: Letter

“It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don’t think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There’s a singular and a perpetual…
William Shakespeare: To thine own self be true

“This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” —William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist.
Japanese proverb: Reverse side

“The reverse side also has a reverse side.” —Japanese proverb.
Gerry Spence: Arguments and relationships

“I once believed, as most do, that if arguments are to be won, the opponent must be pummeled into submission and silenced. You can imagine how that idea played at home. If, in accordance with such a definition, I won an argument, I began to lose the relationship.” —Gerry Spence.
Madame de Stael: Desire

“The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.” —Madame de Stael, writer (22 Apr 1766-1817).