-
Adam Smith: Happiness
“What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” —Adam Smith.
-
Robert Fulghum: Life is lumpy
“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of…
-
Rick Ruben: Pick the best
“If you need 10 of something, make 30. Then pick the best.” —Rick Ruben.
-
Lawrence Lessig: Government of the many
“There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.” —Lawrence Lessig.
-
Gene Roddenberry: Greatest bargain
“I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which the reader can enjoy whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes. Instead of experiencing just one life, the book-lover can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives.” —Gene Roddenberry.
-
Thomas Hardy: Sorriness and grandeur
“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” —Thomas Hardy.
-
Pete Davis: Why do we love committers?
“Why do we love committers but act like browsers? I think it’s because of three fears. First, we have a fear of regret: we worry that if we commit to something, we will later regret having not committed to something else. Second, we have a fear of association: we think that if we commit to…
-
Assaad Chalhoub: Design and code
“Design without code is just a daydream. Code without design is a nightmare.” — Assaad Chalhoub.
-
Mark Twain: Best judge of one
“It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one. “—Mark Twain.
-
John F Kennedy: Conscientious objector
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” —John F. Kennedy.
-
Jack Kerouac: The mad ones
“The only people for me are the mad ones —the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones |who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles. “—Jack Kerouac, On the Road.
-
William Pitt: Necessity
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” —William Pitt.
-
Graham Hawkes: Space exploration
“Space exploration promised us alien life, lucrative planetary mining, and fabulous lunar colonies. News flash, ladies and gents: Space is nearly empty. It’s a sterile vacuum, filled mostly with the junk we put up there.” —Graham Hawkes.
-
C S Lewis: Mental pain
‘Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.’—C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
-
Hubert Humphrey: Compassion and concern
“Compassion is not weakness and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.” —Hubert Humphrey.
-
Geoffrey James: Law of Least Astonishment
“A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity. A program should follow the Law of Least Astonishment. What…
-
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Passions
“A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.” —Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
-
Noam Chomsky: All over the place
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” —Noam Chomsky.
-
Bill Gates: Automation
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” —Bill Gates.
-
Elad Gil: Dramatically under-hyped
“I think AI is dramatically under-hyped because most enterprises have not done anything in it—and that’s where all the money is, all the changes, all the impact, all the jobs, everything.” —Elad Gil.
-
Ayn Rand: Who’s going to stop me
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.” —Ayn Rand.
-
George Santayana: Uncompromising sincerity
“A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.” —George Santayana.
-
Edgar R Fiedler: Sense of humor
“Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.” —Edgar R. Fiedler.
-
John Stuart Mill: Inaction
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” —John Stuart Mill.
-
Ward Cunningham: Catastrophe
“The most likely way for the catastrophe to unfold is for the code to work exactly as specified.” —Ward Cunningham.
-
Ruskin Bond: Red roses
“Red roses for young lovers. French beans for longstanding relationships.” —Ruskin Bond.
-
Dr. Albert Hoffman: Materialistic, dualistic belief
“I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing…
-
Helen Rowland: Two kinds of men
“There are only two kinds of men — the dead and the deadly.” —Helen Rowland.
-
Steve Jobs: Often times
“Often times, the ones that are successful loved what they did so they could persevere when it got really tough.” —Steve Jobs.
-
William Henry Seward: Justice and humanity
“As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity.” —William Henry Seward.
-
Sylvia Plath: Figs
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs…
-
Katherine Anne Porter: The past
“The past is never where you think you left it. “ —Katherine Anne Porter.
-
John Kenneth Galbraith: Everyone gets busy on the proof
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” —John Kenneth Galbraith.
-
Hal Borland: You can’t
“You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.” —Hal Borland.
-
Thomas Jefferson: Economy
“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our…
-
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot: Clamor and suffering
“In a free country there is much clamor, with little suffering: in a despotic state there is little complaint but much suffering.” —Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot.
-
Jon Bentley: Not there at all
“In software, the most beautiful code, the most beautiful functions, and the most beautiful programs are sometimes not there at all.” — Jon Bentley.
-
Dante Alighieri: Hottest places in hell
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” —Dante Alighieri.
-
Horace Mann: Be ashamed to die
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” —Horace Mann
-
Steve Jobs: Convincing
“I’ve never found in my whole life that you could convince someone who doesn’t want to work hard to work hard.” —Steve Jobs.
-
Alexi Pappas: Self-doubt and second-guessing
“We go through life thinking everyone else has it better than us until we grow up and realize we’re all in our own tiny boats of self-doubt and second-guessing.” —Alexi Pappas.
-
Sophie Scholl: Righteous cause
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause… It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death…
-
Harry S Truman: Source of terror
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” —Harry S. Truman.
-
Henry David Thoreau: Do not despair of life
“Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.” —Henry David Thoreau.
-
Rabindranath Tagore: Plucking her petals
“By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.” —Rabindranath Tagore.
-
Alan Perlis: Simplicity
“Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.” — Alan Perlis.
-
Sigmund Freud: Trust
“In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.” —Sigmund Freud.
-
Bill Garrett: Command line
“Linux supports the notion of a command line or a shell for the same reason that only children read books with only pictures in them. Language, be it English or something else, is the only tool flexible enough to accomplish a sufficiently broad range of tasks.” —Bill Garrett.
