Quotes

If the brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would be too stupid to understand it.

• Unknown

Any idea is better when made recursive.

• Brian Randell

Lose some sleep and say you tried.

• Joy Division

Tozan said to his monks, "You monks should know there is an even higher understanding in Buddhism."
A monk stepped forward and asked, "What is the higher Buddhism?"
Tozan answered, "It is not Buddha."

• traditional Zen koan

A good design is better than you think.

• Unknown

The most reliable component is one which doesn't exist.

• NASA Engineer

Diminish something and it will increase.
Increase something and it will diminish.

• Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

I don't know and I don't want to know.

• Kevin Greer

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

• Leonardo da Vinci

I wake up each morning determined to change the world… and also to have one hell of a good time.
Sometimes that makes planning the day a little difficult.

• E.B. White

I'm going to replace you with a really short script.

• Joel Hughes

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation.

• Leibnitz

People can be conditioned.

• Candy Wong

Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.

• David Wheeler

He who thinks in walls and floors, instead of bricks and concrete, can build larger buildings.

• Unknown

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

• Albert Einstein

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity.

• David Gelernter

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

• Abraham Lincoln

I came up with one answer once, and I have just been repeating it over and over again for a frightening number of years.

• James Gosling

Paradigm confrontation is rarely fun for people; new ideas tend to be unpleasant and threatening.

• Ted Nelson

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

• Linus Pauling

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

• Samuel Johnson

It’s a good idea, but it’s a new idea; therefore, I fear it and must reject it.

• Homer Simpson

You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.

• Antoine de Saint Exupery

Over-engineering a solution is the most common approach to dealing with complexity, yet it typically leads to total implosion.

Software which is flexible, simple, sloppy, tolerant and altogether forgiving turns out to be most resilient.

• Bosworth (on Loose Abstractions)
  

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

• Albert Einstein

Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.

• Rob Pike circa 1991

Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.

• Frederick Crane

When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.

• Walter Lippmann

The solution to a hard problem, when solved, is simple.

• Unknown

Software development is a knowledge acquisition activity, not a manufacturing activity.

• John Panzer

Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

• Ira Glass

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

• Confucius

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

• Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts.

• Elbert Hubbard

The main challenge of computer science is how not to get lost in the complexities of [your] own making.

• Edsger W. Dijkstra

See also: Epigrams in Programming by Alan J. Perlis