Some Favorite Quotes

Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it -Alan Kay

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trapping of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry- Bertrand Russell

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)

Style is time’s fool. Form is time’s student.(Stewart Brand )

You can accomplish anything you want in life provided you don’t mind who gets the credit.(Harry S Truman)

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.( Gandhi)

Remember what the fellow said: In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. And in Switzerland they had brotherly love and 500 years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock -Harry Lime (Orson Welles), The Third Man

The mathematician's patterns, like those of the painter's or the poet's, the ideas, like the colours or words, must fit together in a harmonious way. There is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics. - G.H. Hardy (in "A Mathematician's Apology")
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler -Albert Einstein

Omit needless words - Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is - John von Neumann

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them - John von Neumann

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
- Alan Perlis

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
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours - Henry David Thoreau

To be original you must listen to the voice of your heart rather than the clamor of the world — and have the courage to teach publicly what you have learned. The source of all genius is sincerity; men would be wiser if they were more moral - Ludwig Borne

I was worth about a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and about ten million when

I was twenty-four, and about a hundred million when I was twenty-five, but it didn't matter because I never did it for the money - Steve Jobs

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man - Bertrand Russell

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you'll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man. - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Adolescent

We should forget about small efficiences, say, about 97% of the time. Premature optimization is the root of all evil. - Donald E. Knuth

The world would be a better place if Larry Wall had been born in Iceland, or any other country where the native language actually has syntax.- Anon.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

Computers work. People think. - IBM Poster

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him? ~Chuang Tzu
Jamal: They have this writing contest at school. You ever enter one of those?
Forrester: Yes, once.
Jamal: Yeah? Did you win?
Forrester: Of course I won.
Jamal: What, like money or something?
Forrester: The Pulitzer.
(Finding Forrester)

The world I see -- you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You climb the wrist-thick vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway.

The things you own end up owning you.

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everything drops to zero.

Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.

Losing all hope is freedom.
( Fight Club)