favorite quotes

Just a few of my favorite quotes. If you don't like these, try wikiquote or quote garden.

on life

Character is much easier kept than recovered.: Thomas Paine
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.: Henry David Thoreau
Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.: Thomas J. Watson
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.: John Louis von Neumann
You say you couldn't live if you thought the world had no purpose. You're saying that you can't form purposes of your own — that you need someone to tell you what to do. The average child has more gumption than that.: John McCarthy

Well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can't easily express complex problems in C, so you don't.: Erik Naggum
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.: Martin Fowler
If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as lines produced but as lines spent.: Eric Dijkstra
Linux is free as in syphallis.: Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.: Eric Dijkstra
If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.: Eric Dijkstra
Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for 'the average programmer', you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner.: Eric Dijkstra