Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Steve Maguire: Impossible conditions
“Use assertions to detect impossible conditions.” —Steve Maguire.
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A Gide: Start again
“Tout choses sont dites deja, mais comme personne n’ecoute, il faut toujours recommencer.” —A. Gide. “All things have already been said, but since no one listens, one must always start again.” —A. Gide.
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Larry Wall: If someone stinks
“If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them.” —Larry Wall.
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Larry Wall: Generalization
“Sometimes we choose the generalization. Sometimes we don’t.” —Larry Wall.
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S Morganstern: Accidents that mean something
“A girl and a boy bump into each other — surely an accident. A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops — surely another accident. But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid — *that had to mean something*.” —S. Morganstern.
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Garrison Keillor: Not everything in nature has a function
“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.” —Garrison Keillor.
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Gerry Conway: Against the greater force
“So do the noble fall. For they are ever caught in a trap of their own making. A trap — walled by duty, and locked by reality. Against the greater force they must fall — for, against that force they fight because of duty, because of obligations. And when the noble fall, the base remain.…
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H L Mencken: Mathematics
“It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.” —H.L. Mencken.
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Emo Philips: Who was telling me this
“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” —Emo Phillips.
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Will Ahmed: Success
“Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home.” —Will Ahmed.
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Michael Pollan: Schizoid
“There’s a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig — an animal easily as intelligent as a dog — that becomes the…
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Vincent Van Gogh: Great things
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. The trick is to focus on the first small thing. Starting small is still starting, and small beginnings often lead to extraordinary endings.” —Vincent Van Gogh.
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Russell M Fowler: Business cycle
“Maybe the reason the business cycle endures is the economy is solidly based on human nature. When things are going good, some human reactions occur: overconfidence, complacency, poor workmanship, greed, over expansion, mistakes; all bad and leading to a downturn. Then when things are going bad, there is a tendency to shape up and turn…
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Hartley Shawcross: Answer to conscience
“There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.” —Hartley Shawcross.
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Gertrude Stein: Genius
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” —Gertrude Stein.
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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…
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George Bernard Shaw: No sincerer love
“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” —George Bernard Shaw.
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Boris Beizer: Testing versus debugging
“Testing proves a programmer’s failure. Debugging is the programmer’s vindication.” —Boris Beizer.
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Robert Frost: Jury
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” —Robert Frost.
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Gerald Holton: Uniquely privileged
“In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.” —Gerald Holton.
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Hal Abelson: Giants on my shoulders
“If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.” —Hal Abelson.
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Edward Abbey: Ideology of the cancer cell
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” —Edward Abbey.
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Richard Hamming: Shoulders and toes
“Mathematicians stand on each other’s shoulders while computer scientists stand on each other’s toes.” —Richard Hamming.
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Learned Hand: Loyalty to truth
“I will remember that what has brought us up from savagery is a loyalty to truth, and truth cannot emerge unless it is subjected to the utmost scrutiny — will you not agree that a society which has lost sight of that, cannot survive?” —Learned Hand.
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Rebecca West: Biography
“Just how difficult it is to write a biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.” —Rebecca West.
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Peter Van Roy: Static typing
“Static typing is to reliable programming what a spelling checker is to a good writer.” —Peter Van Roy.
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Paul Graham: Founders
“There are things founders can do that managers can’t, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is.”— Paul Graham, Founder Mode.
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Edith Wharton: Two ways of spreading light
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” —Edith Wharton.
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Eric Raymond: Smart data structures
“Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.” —Eric Raymond.
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Stendhal: Shepherd
“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” —Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle).
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Bion of Borysthenes: Adapt yourself to circumstances
“We should not try to alter circumstances but to adapt ourselves to them as they really are, just as sailors do. They don’t try to change the winds or the sea but ensure that they are always ready to adapt themselves to conditions. In a flat calm they use the oars; with a following breeze…
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Francis Bacon: Cunning men pass for wise
“Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.” —Francis Bacon.
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Oprah Winfrey: Real integrity
“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” —Oprah Winfrey.
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Ethan Allen: Miracles
“In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.” —Ethan Allen.
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Alexander Hamilton: Exhibit things as they are
“I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.” —Alexander Hamilton.
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Bill Maher: Infantile fantasy land
“Maybe every other American movie shouldn’t be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence.” —Bill Maher.
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Honore dé Balzac: Duration of passion
“The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.” —Honore dé Balzac.
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Swami Prabhupada: Diamonds
“If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers.” —Swami Prabhupada.
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George Leonard: Plateau
“The most important lessons here — especially for young people — is that even if you’re shooting for the stars, you’re going to spend most of your time on a plateau. That’s where the deepest, most lasting learning takes place, so you might as well enjoy it. When I was first learning…I just assumed that…
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Michelle Obama: Immigrants
“If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition — the infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas, generation after generation, that has made us the greatest country on earth.” —Michelle Obama.
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Fran Lebowitz: Responsibility as a parent
“Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word ‘collectible’ as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.”…
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David Lynch: Happy accidents
“Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn’t even exist. It’s kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.” —David Lynch.
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Margaret Courtney: Be kind to thy father
“Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, / Who loved thee so fondly as he? / He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, / And joined in thy innocent glee.” —Margaret Courtney.
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Franklin K Dane: Ignorance
“Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.” —Franklin K. Dane.
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Moliere: Accountable
“It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.” —Moliere.
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Oscar Wilde: Ignorance of the community
“Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.” —Oscar Wilde.
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Martin Luther King Jr: Good neighbor
“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
