mike's web log/quotes

advice computers editing education funny general language laws music politics reading religion science sports technology working writing (all)

Authors:
 
And so to bed.
-- Samuel Pepys   general


I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal   writing | editing


Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
-- Samuel Johnson   general | education


You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.
-- Sam Levenson   advice | funny | education


The only cats worth anything are the cats who take chances.
-- Thelonius Monk   general | music


Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain   advice | funny


Never trust someone who can't say sorry to a dog.
-- James Lileks   advice | general


Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx   funny | reading


I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
-- Hugh Laurie   funny


You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
-- Albert Einstein   writing | general | education


The beginning and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.
-- John Galsworthy   writing | general


BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
-- Ambrose Bierce   funny


EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
-- Ambrose Bierce   funny


Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
-- Shakespeare   advice | general


Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.
-- Richard Stallman   general | computers


Life would be dull without mistakes.
-- Oscar Wilde   general


Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
-- Confucius   advice | general | education


What is past is prologue.
-- Shakespeare   general


I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain   advice | funny | education


I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; - one, that I have lost all the names, - the other, that I have spent all the money.
-- Samuel Johnson   general | funny


Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
-- Gene Fowler   writing | funny


Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.
-- Winston Churchill   writing


You have what you have not lost;
you have not lost horns;
ergo, you have horns.
-- Anon.   funny


I yam what I yam.
-- Popeye   advice | general | funny


I have known happiness, for I have done good work.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson   general


No one ever says, "It's only a game" when their team is winning.
-- George Carlin   general | funny | sports


I write books to find out about things.
-- Rebecca West   writing | education


Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
-- Mullah Nasrudin   education | general


A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanations.
-- Anon.   general


I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best -- it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money -- provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
-- Peter DeVries   education | general | funny


There's no such thing as fun for the whole family.
-- Jerry Seinfeld   general | funny


A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
-- Thomas Mann   writing


One cannot but be impressed by the amazing hospitality of the English language.
-- Robert Burchfield   language


Methus'lah lived 900 years
Methus'lah lived 900 years
But who calls that livin'
When no gal will give in
To no man what's 900 years
-- Ira Gerschwin   general | funny


It comes as a shock when the truth dawns that every young person is just an older person waiting to happen.
-- Ben Elton   general


An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
-- Niels Bohr   general


What grammarians say should be has perhaps less influence on what shall be than even the more modest of them realize; usage evolves itself little disturbed by their likes and dislikes. And yet the temptation to show how better use might have been made of the material to hand is sometimes irresistible.
-- H.W. Fowler   language


Advertising can be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
-- Stephen Butler Leacock   general | funny


The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear.
-- Richard Dawkins   general | science


All the dreams I have in which we are successful are dreams in which we succeed in reducing the Yankees to a more appropriate stature in life.
-- Bill James   sports | funny


I don't need time. What I need is a deadline.
-- Duke Ellington   general | funny | advice


A language is never in a state of fixation, but is always changing; we are not looking at a lantern-slide but at a moving picture.
-- Andrew Lloyd James, linguist   language


I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-- Douglas Adams   funny | writing


Don't get too attached to your deathless prose, because the editor will change it. A good editor will improve your writing, but any editor will change it. In this respect editors are the same as dogs; when they see something new, they simply must mark it with their own scent.
-- Mike Gunderloy   editing | writing


To know another language is to have a second soul.
-- Charlemagne   language


My resolve at the age of 61 is to have more fun. Basketball and steam rooms are part of that plan. I am guilty of obsessive work habits, hunkered over a laptop, pushing, pushing, pushing, when a sensible man would know that an hour's break, shooting baskets, walking, steaming, would be good for him and good for the work. Why does one not learn this simple truth, even at the age of 61?
-- Garrison Keillor   advice


Cringley's Second Law: Ease of use with equivalent performance varies with the square root of the cost of development. That means that to design a computer that's ten times easier to use would cost 100 times as much.
-- Robert Cringley   computers | laws


It is enough for an author to have written something for it to be true, with no proof other than the power of his talent and the authority of his voice.
-- Gabriel García Márquez   writing


If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.
-- Lord Salisbury   general


In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
-- Imbesi's Law of Conservation of Filth   general | funny | laws


Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
-- Samuel Johnson   general


Everyone should have a Louis Jordan record in their medicine cabinet.
-- Joe Jackson   music


Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a fucking act of will.
-- Ira Glass   general


The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.
-- Gabriel Zaid   reading | general


Most people prefer internal mechanisms for determining for themselves what is right and what is wrong, but perceive other people as needing to be regulated by laws.
-- Antanas Mockus, mayor of Bogotá, Columbia   general


The scientific handicapper will never beat the horses, but he will learn to be alert for subtleties that escape the less trained eye. To weigh and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed at.
-- Richard Russo   general


People studying literature rarely say anything that would be of the slightest use to those producing it.
-- Paul Graham   education | writing


One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.
-- Tobias Wolff   writing


The world is a spectacularly, unfairly biased towards morning people. I suspect that is because they got up first and had it all organised that way before anyone else was out of bed.
-- Charles Miller   funny | general


Seven Deadly Sins Rated
Sloth: Sloth is cheap, and easy to get. B+

Gluttony: Gluttony can be hard work. C+

Wrath: Unsociable, bad on the nerves, and drives property values down. D

Lust: Ah, lust. Putting the "deadly" back into the Seven Deadly Sins. B

Pride: My high school counselors were always pushing self-esteem on me. Were they pawns of the Adversary? C

Envy: All you have to do is covet something of someone else's and boom, you're a brimstone hors d'oeuvre. C-

Avarice: Greedy people inevitably end up looking goofy in public. D
-- Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg   funny


With sufficient leisure I can compose excellent impromptus.
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau   writing


The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
-- Oscar Wilde   general


First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.
-- Mark Twain   general | funny


Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
-- George Carlin   funny | general


Let me just say that, if you ever have the choice of putting your words in powerpoint or having them carved into 30-foot high marble, I'd go for the marble.
-- Peter Norvig   writing | general


What the English depict with great talent is bizarre characters, because they have lots of those amongst them.
-- Madame de Staël   general


We find nothing so consistently absorbing as our own unprecedented existence.
-- Evan S. Connell   general


There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.
-- Marcel Proust   advice | general


One cat just leads to another.
-- Ernest Hemingway   general


I had a childhood. It's no big deal.
-- David Mamet   general


To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
-- Hippocrates, physician   advice


Looking at code you wrote more than two weeks ago is like looking at code you are seeing for the first time.
-- Alzheimer's Law of Programming (via Dan Hurvitz)   computers | laws


Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.   general


Facts might be the best way to substantiate an argument, but lies are the next best thing.
-- Wes Boyer & Samuel Stoddard   funny


The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russell   general | politics | religion


Technology smells fear.
-- William M. Akers [also: #]   computers | technology | funny


Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
-- Albert Einstein   general | politics | religion


Go off, you young people, and make a disgrace of yourselves. It will make you better citizens in the end.
-- Garrison Keillor   advice | funny


I'm thinking I'd like to be God of Atheists, 'cause I'll bet there aren't that many duties, and I really value my free time.
-- Westur   religion | funny


German has done for consonants what Hawaiian has done for vowels.
-- Leo Kottke   language | funny


There are 10 types of people in this world -- those who read binary and those who don't.
-- Anon.   computers | funny


The worst hand in poker is the second-best one at the table.
-- Andy Bellin   sports | general


Novels could be called thought experiments. You invent people, you put them in hypothetical situations, and you decide how they will react. The 'proof' of the experiment is if their behaviour seems interesting, plausible, revealing about human nature.
-- David Lodge   writing


I don't believe any more than Spinoza did in the utility of denouncing vice, evil, and sin. Why always accuse, why always condemn? That's a sad ethics indeed, for a sad people.
-- André Comte-Sponville   advice | religion


The cure for the blues is to go to sleep and wake up in the morning. A good night's sleep can change everything. Don't base your life on what you think at 3:00AM.
-- Garrison Keillor   advice


Luckily language is never in the exclusive control of scholars; it does not belong to them alone, as they are often inclined to believe; it belongs to all who have it as a mother-tongue. It is governed not by elected representatives but by a direct democracy, by the people as a whole assembled in town-meeting.
-- Brander Matthews   language


The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
-- Paula Poundstone   funny


Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.
-- Montesquieu   writing | funny


I'd rather be rich than stupid.
-- Jack Handy   funny


Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S Truman   politics


I'm writing a book. I have all the page numbers down, now I just have to fill in the rest.
-- Steven Wright   writing | funny


Now is the time for all good men to come to.
-- Walt Kelly (Pogo)   general | politics


Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.
-- King George V   advice


Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman   advice


Being good at anything is like figure skating -- the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever.
-- Hugh MacLeod   advice | general


In the language as it exists clearness is not so easily won. Even under the most favorable conditions, it is exceedingly difficult to attain.
-- Adams Sherman Hill   language


There's no point going into a discussion unless you assume that the person you are disagreeing with has a clue.
-- Charles Miller   advice


When there's a schmuck involved, you can't analyze a situation as if there weren't a schmuck involved.
-- Calvin Trillin   advice


Just because a question is asked does not mean it merits an answer.
-- Dear Prudence   advice


It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man. So he was. Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff: especially in his conversation and correspondence. Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.
-- Charles Dickens   general


Have fun, and if possible take pictures.
-- One of my cousins   advice


A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
-- Theodore Roosevelt   education | general


It's sort of romantic to buy a mooshy greeting card for your loved one, but to be really romantic, you should sign it.
-- Samuel Stoddard   funny


I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.
-- Kurt Vonnegut   general | advice


Most people are scared to be free. They want someone else to tell them how to be free.
-- Cornell West   general | advice


Getting lost can do wonders in helping one figure out how things actually work.
-- Jenny Berger   education | general | advice


Here's a piece of advice: if someone proposes a grammatical principle that is violated by the titles of two or more classic novels or stories, you should think twice before paying them money for further advice on grammar and usage.
-- Mark Liberman   language | advice


Without variables, programs would not be very interesting.
-- Kenny Kerr   computers


Sherlock Holmes stories have done more damage to people's understanding of human intelligence than anyone other than Rene Descartes.
-- Clay Shirky   general


Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
-- Charles Darwin   education | general


The software product cycle is a little like a pregnancy I suppose. The first few months are easy, even enjoyable. The last few weeks are mostly discomfort and pain. But then, the product is finally "born", and the world suddenly seems to make sense again.
-- Eric Sink   computers | writing


Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
-- Donald Knuth   general | computers


The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.
-- Mary Roach   general | funny


Writers like to think that writing is like Arctic exploration or flying the Atlantic solo but really it's more like golf. You've got to go out and do it every day and live by the results. You can brood over it but in the end you've got to take the club out of the bag and take your swing. You hit the ball to where it wants to go, a series of eighteen small steel cups recessed in turf, on a course that others have traversed before you. You are not the first. You accomplish this by practicing an elegant economy you learned from others and thereby overcoming your damn self-consciousness which trips you up every time.
-- Garrison Keillor   writing


I swear to God, the longer I live here, the tinier the world gets, but as long as it keeps buying me beers, it's okay by me.
-- Sarah Brown   general


Look, you don't get good at writing by deleting adjectives. Writing is difficult and demanding; you can learn to get moderately good at it through decades of practice writing millions of words and critiquing what you've written or having others critique it.
-- Geoffrey K. Pullum   writing | education


A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
-- Thomas Carlyle   general | funny


Of course, the real problem with software development is the users. It's unbelievable. They've caused problems with every program I've ever written.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers | advice


There is nothing sadder than mass indivdualism.
-- "Mike"   general | politics


The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.
-- James D. Nicoll (#)   language


Let me tell you what a handy life skill blogging is. Its like telling people you are really awesome at filling things up with water. The literary equivalent of the girl with the great personality.
-- Dusty Scott   writing


Steak and puns: a rare medium done well.
-- Richard Lederer   language | writing | funny


To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
-- Jack Handy   funny


If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.
-- Epictetus   advice | education


When doing botanical work in South America, steer clear of the monkeys: They will throw sticks at you with surprising accuracy.
-- Botanist, Tricks of the Trade   general | advice


The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment.
-- T.H. White   general


I was such an idiot just a few short years ago. But then, it's been my experience so far that no matter how old I get, I was always an idiot a few years ago.
-- Jerry Kindall   general


A writer who fixes too much attention on the correctness of his punctuation, or a reader who does the same, is missing the point: the job of text is to communicate, not satisfy pedantic rule makers.
-- Michael Quinion   language | writing


Even on the small scale, when you look at any programming organization, the programmers with the most power and influence are the ones who can write and speak in English clearly, convincingly, and comfortably. Also it helps to be tall, but you can't do anything about that.
-- Joel Spolsky   computers | writing


Sometimes I feel guilty about having a weblog. As hobbies go, it's a pretty narcissistic one, and it takes time away from worthy endeavors like paying bills and cleaning the bathroom.
-- Becky S   writing


Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
-- Viktor Frankl   advice


I bought a TV. It's like being born again, but this time retarded.
-- Rory Blyth   general | funny


He had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading at all.
-- Richard Russo   general | reading


Women can actually love us for ourselves, bless their hearts, even when we can't love ourselves.
-- Roger Ebert   general | advice


Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?" The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.
-- Stephen King   writing | advice


People buy with emotion & justify with reason always.
-- Hanan Levin   general


This process of digging up the details and learning how things work leads down many side streets and to many dead ends, but is fundamental (I think) to understanding something new. Many times in my books I have set out to write how something works, thinking I know how it works, only to write some test programs that lead me to things that I never knew. I try to convey some of these missteps in my books, as I think seeing the wrong solution to a problem (and understanding why it is wrong) is often as informative as seeing the correct solution.
-- W. Richard Stevens   writing | computers | education


If I wanted slow, buggy, and crash-prone, I would have written it myself.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers


Most of us only get hungrier as we get older -- more eager for experience, for emotional danger.
-- David Denby   general


Going forward with your life is not always a matter of having your eye on some goal. You can also just be going down a road watching out for potholes.
-- Michael Broschat   general


One of my greatest anxieties in life is the possibility of being at the mercy of a man less intelligent than me, yet highly skilled in an arena of which I have no knowledge.
-- J. Robert Lennon   general


In the beginning there was nothing, and God said, "Let there be light!" Then there was still nothing, but at least you could see it.
-- Flying Karamazov Brothers   religion | funny


What surprised me about this job was the constant exposure to poor housekeeping.
-- Coroner Stories   general


Good usage is written on the sand.
-- Richard Lederer   language


Whenever someone asks me to define love, I usually think for a minute, then I spin around and pin the guy's arm behind his back. Now who's asking the questions?
-- Jack Handy   funny


If you ever wonder if you will regret not having gone fishing with your dad, shut up and make it happen.
-- Dusty Scott   advice


Using the word accident tends to make people think safety is a matter of luck, and it isn't.
-- Motorcycle Safety Foundation   general | advice


Sort of weird that when you get to be fifty years old and you are involved with a woman with whom you have no matrimonial tie, the moniker for the relationship becomes that which you used in high school.
-- Bob Reselman   general | language


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
-- Hanlon's Razor   general | advice | laws


Nature is cruelly parsimonious with pleasure.
-- Cocaine.org   general


Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. [...] One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.
-- Milton Glaser   general | advice | religion | politics


As for kissing on the first date, you should never date someone whom you would not wish to kiss immediately.
-- Mr. Blue (Garrison Keillor)   advice


When life hands you lemons, ask for a bottle of tequila and salt.
-- Richard Harter   advice | funny


Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
-- Thomas Szasz   advice | education


I have a blog and a search engine, and I am not afraid to use 'em.
-- Michael Bérubé   writing | funny


Anything worth doing is worth doing nekked.
-- Graffito at the Tractor Tavern, Seattle   advice | funny


When I ask people what they regret most about high school, they nearly all say the same thing: that they wasted so much time.
-- Paul Graham   advice | general | education


You don't have to wait to be an adult. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age. [...] The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids don't.
-- Paul Graham   advice


If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.
-- John Perry   general | funny | advice


In object oriented systems, there is a bit of mental judo going on whereby you convert a system from imperative statements like "print x" to a more message oriented "to: x; message: go print yourself".
-- Sam Ruby   computers


Sometimes, writing code means you've failed. So much of what we do already exists, and in more mature, complete form. The real challenge in modern programming isn't sitting down and writing a ton of code; it's figuring out what existing code or frameworks you should be hooking together.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers


I have nothing against God, except his fan club.
-- Jenny Berger   religion


90% of success lies in returning phone calls, not being late, following up, and finishing the job on time.
-- Dusty Scott   advice


I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, and of the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an Islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.
-- Lord Byron   advice | general | education


Anyone who does research knows you have to to stay focussed on your topic and not go down every interesting avenue you pass, or you will end up wandering aimlessly in attention-deficit limbo.
-- Ian Frazier   advice | writing


Facts don't really make a huge difference in people's behavior.
-- Beth Freeman   general


In the absence of authentication evidence, clients must assume that all servers are run by evil hackers and servers must assume that all clients are run by evil hackers. Once you accept that fundamental design principle then it becomes much easier to reason about client-server interactions. Think like an evil person!
-- Eric Lippert on Web security   computers


Try a thing you havent done three times.
Once, to get over the fear of doing it.
Twice, to learn how to do it.
And the third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
-- Robert Evans   advice | education


Mathematicians, when they work, engage in intensely serious play. They follow their curiosity into problems that interest them and toward the smell of a solution.
-- Richard Preston   general


If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.
-- Thomas Pynchon   general | politics


When I was a kid, I remember reading about how democracies ended. What surprised me was how often it was a peaceful takeover. Fascists took power in many places not through force, but through rigged elections, broken rules, and consolidation of power, all hidden behind flags and God and promises of glory.
-- Bob Harris   politics


The language isn't falling apart. We don't know whether we'll be able to pay for our lunch in 10 years, but we'll certainly be able to order it.
-- Geoff Nunberg   language


Politicians who act from moral certainty, from the sense that any and all opponents are beyond the pale because they're morally reprobate, have no patience for and no commitment to democracy's limitations to power, its provisions for compromise by its inclusion of different viewpoints at the table, and its commitment to the legitimate right of all contending political factions to be in the majority in some instances.
-- Michael Bérubé   politics


Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
-- Mary Schmich   advice | funny


The plural of anecdote is not data.
-- Orac   general | politics


The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer   general


Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
-- Robert King Merton   general | religion


To stay young, To save the world, Break the mirror.
-- Nanao Sakaki   advice


A person almost always burnishes his reputation by shutting up: I learned that as a boy.
-- Garrison Keillor   advice


Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Steven Wright   funny | general | education


You save time when you don't need to have an awards ceremony every time a C statement does what it's supposed to do.
-- Steve McConnell   computers


It's an odd phenomenon that when you know something about technology, people assume you know everything about technology.
-- Chris Clements   computers | general


An unfortunate side effect of editing is that you'll find it difficult to simply read ever again.
-- Judith A. Tarutz   editing


People have children for all sorts of reasons, I know, but one of those reasons must be that children growing up make you feel that life has a sense of momentum -- kids send you on a journey.
-- Nick Hornby   general


The secret to a satisfying career is to make only projects you believe in.
-- Robert Altman   advice


Nobody is really smart enough to program computers. The only way you'll ever succeed as a software developer is through humility and the Zen concept of beginner's mind: approaching everything as if you were seeing it for the first time. Most of all, that means not being afraid to ask the stupid questions.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers


The assumption that humanity at large shared the democratic Western idea of freedom was an American delusion.
-- Barbara Tuchman, historian, on Vietnam   politics


So often we rush through life, never pausing to notice the little things. The taste of a flower. The feel of wet mud against the roof of your mouth. The sound of one foot clapping. But it is these trivial things that make life worth living. Plus money, sex and liquor.
-- Leon Bambrick   general | funny


War is always about betrayal. It's about betrayal of soldiers by politicians. And it's about betrayal of the young by the old.
-- Chris Hedges   politics


I think anybody who believes that they understand the will of God and can act as an agent for God is dangerous.
-- Chris Hedges   religion


Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
-- Douglas Hofstadter   general | advice | laws


Placing an anti-procrastination tool on the internet is like hosting an alcoholics anonymous meeting inside a brewery.
-- Leon Bambrick   general | funny


AJAX: Finally, a technology that can be universally applied to solve any problem, except maybe paranoia, since they won't turn javascript on.
-- "nate"   computers


How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter -- poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart.
-- Garrison Keillor   writing | general


goodnight you cats
Now is the time for all good cats to go to sleep
there are things to do tomorrow
And you can do them then
but now its time to sleep
and you can dream
-- martha the cat   writing | general | advice


Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. [...] The Internet has accomplished what no consumer advocate could: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public.
-- D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics   general | computers


Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
-- Honore de Balzac   advice | general


Whoever builds upon patriotism as a sufficient basis for conducting a long and bloody war will find themselves deceived in the end ... for a time it may of itself push men to action, to bear much, to encounter difficulties, but it will not endure unassisted by interest.
-- George Washington   politics


Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.
-- Samuel James Ervin Jr.   politics | religion


When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
-- Robert T. Pirsig   religion | politics


Its amazing how much I can remember of the worst music of the seventies when I struggle to remember the passwords to my many different computer accounts.
-- "Ancarett"   general


The goal of a GUI is to present the user with as few decision points as possible. Remember the Macintosh dictum that the user should never have to tell the machine anything that it knows or can deduce for itself. "As few as possible decision points" is another way of stating the guiding principle of good UI design for end-users: Allow the user the luxury of ignorance. This does not mean that you can't reward acquired knowledge with more choices and more power; you can and should do that. But the user should also be able to choose to remain ignorant and still get all their basic tasks done. The more thoroughly software developers internalize the truth that real users have better things to do with their time and attention than worship at the shrine of geek technical prowess, the better off everyone will be.
-- Eric Raymond   computers


I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Poul Anderson   general | funny | laws


An answer (notice that I didn't write "the answer") to a question has become so easy to obtain today that when we are in a situation apart from the easy access to answers to which we have become accustomed, we will often choose not to pursue an answer, perhaps even to ignore the question.
-- Michael Broschat   general


Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.
-- Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"   general


On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage   general | computers


The rules [of language] are precise and strict and are understood and followed by every speaker of idiomatic English, even though they're not usually taught in school. Fluent speakers don't know they know them and couldn't explain them, say to someone learning the language, but they know immediately when they've been broken. Native speakers pick up the rules for using such idioms by example and experience and only suffer confusion when these real-life rules conflict with the ones that grammarians of an earlier period would have had us believe were correct.
-- Michael Quinion   language


Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
-- Herman Goering   politics


Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.
-- Mark Abley, journalist   language


Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
-- Louis Kronenberger   general


I don't know how people can stand to drive at twenty miles an hour. It's dull. Really, really dull.
-- Rory Blyth   general | funny


Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it.
-- Tony Long   computers | general


The aspects of usage (and mathematics) that really matter are not learned easily and are not learned early.
-- Geoff Nunberg   language | writing


The inconvenience of office moves brought me to a realization. When you're young, you want to have as much stuff as possible. "The kid who dies with the most toys wins." As you grow older, you realize that material goods are a burden and you try to get rid of them in order to simplify your life.
-- Raymond Chen   general | advice


The fine (and gross) points of literacy -- spelling, punctuation, grammar -- elude the vast majority of the Internet's users. To believe that J. Random Users will suddenly and en masse learn to spell and punctuate -- let alone accurately categorize their information according to whatever hierarchy they're supposed to be using -- is self-delusion of the first water.
-- Cory Doctorow   writing


The use of more than one exclamation point side-by-side, in any context (except comics), is a sign of mental insanity, a marketing degree from the University of Phoenix Online, or both.
-- Rory Blyth   writing | funny


Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.
-- Theodor Adorno   general | religion | politics


For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
-- Alice Kahn   general | funny


A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.
-- Samuel Johnson   writing | advice


I believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
-- James Madison   politics


To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.
-- John Jones, U.S. District Judge   religion | politics


Final source code is the real software design.
-- Jack W. Reeves   computers


If someone acts decently in the personals context, they are definitely a good person in real life, because the personals bring out the worst in everyone.
-- Oh, Please   general


One way to make a million dollars would be to work for the Post Office your whole life, and save every penny of your salary. Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundamental conservation law. If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it.
-- Paul Graham   general | computers


If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it.
-- Paul Graham   advice


We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower   politics


It appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.
-- Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University, in a study of brain activity and political bias.   politics


I wonder what laws have been broken to make me safer today?
-- Get Your War On   politics


I like going to bookstores. It's like going to a party and seeing all your old friends.
-- My friend wife Sarah   general


Look and you will find it--what is unsought will go undetected.
-- Sophocles   advice | education


Nothing fascinates the American public so much as the notion that what you eat rather than how much you eat affects your health.
-- Peter Libby, Harvard cardiologist   general


Paper's Law: It's not that simple.
-- Herb Paper, via John Lawler   general | laws


The rule of thumb to remember is that your own desire to believe something or your own opinion about how great the belief is will not convince anyone else. To do that, you need logic and evidence.
-- "How to Win Informal Arguments and Debates"   advice


If if you want to know your past, examine your present circumstances.
If you want to know your future, examine your present thinking.
-- Tibetian saying   advice


Here's a good rule of thumb: For every spelling error you make, your apparent IQ drops by 5 points.
-- John Scalzi   advice | writing


Sure, anger has its bright moments -- you haven't really lived until you've known that special joy of hurling a chair across the room -- but it's also quite time-consuming.
-- Aaron Swartz   general | advice


It is a right, which all free men claim, that they are entitled to complain when they are hurt. They have a right publicly to remonstrate against the abuses of power in the strongest terms, to put their neighbors upon their guard against the craft or open violence of men in authority, and to assert with courage the sense they have of the blessings of liberty, the value they put upon it, and their resolution at all hazards to preserve it.
-- Andrew Hamilton   general | politics


Furrygoat's Law: Every program expands until it can read RSS feeds.
-- Steve Mafosky, based on Lett's Law: All programs evolve until they can send email.   computers | laws


You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
-- Anne Lamott   religion


If it's crap, just change it.
-- Testy Copy Editors   writing | editing | advice


Tuchman's Law: The fact of being reported mulitplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to ten-fold (or any figure the reader would care to supply).
-- Barbara Tuchman, historian   general | politics | laws


When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you're wrong.
-- Greg Saunders   politics


One of the best ways to get to know someone is to look at their bookshelf.
-- Kathy Sierra   general | advice


Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
-- Steve Martin [attr]   writing | funny


Phishing is a major problem because there really is no patch for human stupidity.
-- Mike Danseglio   general | computers


Being in the dictionary is not a badge of honor. People aren't limited to words I've managed to capture and pin down. A dog doesn't have to be registered with the American Kennel Association to be a dog. It still fetches your slippers; it just isn't pedigreed.
-- Erin McKean, American lexicographer   language


Stress is directly proportional to the delta between who you are and who you are projecting to be.
-- Jnan Dash   general | advice


I would have to say that most instructions I come across are unimportant and some are harmful. Most instructions I get about software development process, I would say, would be harmful if I believed them and followed them. Most software process instructions I encounter are fairy tales, both in the sense of being made up and in the sense of being cartoonish. Some things that look like instructions, such as "do not try this at home" or "take out the safety card and follow along," are not properly instructions at all, they are really just ritual phrases uttered to dispel the evil spirits of legal liability.
-- James Bach   writing | general


Better to insist on clarity of thought and fight bad style, than to fight little battles over bad usage.
-- Erin McKean   writing | editing


McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.
-- Erin McKean (also cited as Hartman's Law of Prescriptive Retaliation)   language | editing | writing | laws


We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-- Edward R. Murrow   politics


I have the natural ability to become frustrated.
-- 7th grader   funny


A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
-- Aristotle   politics | religion


The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
-- Samuel Johnson   writing


Editors remain expert on grammar and mechanics, but they offer so much more: analysis, evaluation, imagination, and good judgment applied to information design and management.
-- Carolyn Rude   editing


Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf. "It's ok! I have great advisors standing on the shore telling me what to do!" they say, and then fall off the board, again and again.
-- Joel Spolsky   computers


European public opinion will apparently tolerate people being fired in industries where they really care about performance. Unfortunately the only industry they care enough about so far is soccer.
-- Paul Graham   politics


If in your office you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?
-- Douglas Engelbart (December 9, 1968)   computers


The remarkably wide range of programming languages would seem to offer something for everyone. We could celebrate diversity. We could let a thousand flowers bloom. What actually happens, more often, is that we launch a crusade to convert the infidels—or else exterminate them.
-- Brian Hayes   computers


The time-tested way to overcome language problems - the approach I used to learn French in the first place - is of course to find a volatile girlfriend who is fluent in the language. There is nothing like hysterical weeping over the phone at 3 a.m. to really flex your listening comprehension.
-- Maciej Ceglowski   language | funny | advice


Good luck exploring the infinite abyss!
-- Garden State   general


If you don't know whether you're a bad manager, then you're a bad manager. It's the default state, the start-state, for managers everywhere. So just assume you're bad, and start working to get better at it.
-- Steve Yegge   general | advice


If you do need to optimize for speed or space in your application, attacking anything other than the bottleneck is a waste of time.
-- Philip Chu   computers


Don't send a comma to do a period's job.
-- "David"   writing | editing


It's clear that a high IQ alone probably won't get you very far in life--unless you find a job taking intelligence tests.
-- Steve Sampson   general


Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
-- Robert Benchley   general | funny


We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
-- Frank Tibolt   advice


For civilization to survive, man must remain civilized.
-- Rod Serling   politics | general


Documentation should be treated like any other requirement-estimated, prioritized, and planned for accordingly. In other words, don't blindly create documentation simply because it makes you feel comfortable; instead do it because it adds value.
-- Scott Ambler   computers | writing


A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt   general | advice


Perhaps the most fundamental truth about nature is beyond the human intellect, the way that quantum mechanics is beyond the intellect of a dog.
-- Jim Holt   general


The real reason I want to go to a University -- and the reason, when you get right down to it, everybody else seems to be interested in as well -- is the people. I want to go to a place filled with people like me, but smarter; a place where you can't help but learn.
-- Aaron Swartz   general | advice | education


As it turns out, computers have a hard time with the concept of "good".
-- Jeff Atwood   computers


What is the Internet, if not the world's most efficient way to say something bad about someone -- and post pictures of cats?
-- John Scalzi   computers


We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.
-- Keith Olbermann   politics


The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it's harmless when practiced in moderation.
-- Alan Farnham   general


To be unacquainted with what has passed in the world, before we came into it ourselves, is to be always children.
-- Cicero   general | advice


As someone who observed a graduate department of English from the inside for six years, I can assure you that any correlation between the award of a Ph.D. and actual erudition is often coincidental.
-- John McIntyre   general | funny | education


One of the best things about teaching undergraduates is how much you learn.
-- Mark Liberman   general | education


The more writers you meet, the more you think that writers are cranks, weirdos, no-hopers waiting to get invited out to dinner. As a group, writers are not big, powerful people. They look it, perhaps, because of their books, but who are they? I have great regard for them, but the average person doesn't give a shit one way or the other.
-- Paul Theroux   writing


Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
-- Arnold Lobel   reading | funny


The way I figure it, the only reason to grow up is so you can afford to buy yourself all the crap your parents wouldn't buy you when you were a kid.
-- Jeff Atwood   general


Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
-- Richard Feynman   general | religion


It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
-- Freeman Dyson   general | advice


Standard English is, of course, the version of the language that has resulted from years of hand-wringing about the speed with which it has changed.
-- Kitty Burns Florey   language | funny


The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan   general


Language isn't a china doll we take out of the cupboard to dust off once in a while. Language is for using. And in being used, it changes. Once language stops changing, it dies.
-- bradshaw of the future   language


The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
-- Frank Herbert   general | education


Anybody who reads the newspaper can easily look at the high-tech industry and see that stupidity is like beer at an NFL football game: Half the people have got plenty of it and they keep spilling it on the other half.
-- Eric Sink   computers | funny


There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
-- George Washington   general | advice | politics | education


The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
-- Walter Bagehot   writing | reading


Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
-- Henry Ward Beecher   reading | funny


If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
-- Isaac Asimov   general | education


I can tell you that there is this multi-billion dollar automobile industry that works on this principle: people want to be a little better than their neighbour, but not so much better that they are different than their neighbour.
-- Reg Braithwaite   general


You cannot persuade someone to consider an idea by debating them into submission.
-- Reg Braithwaite   advice


He who gets his users past the suck threshold and into the kick-ass zone the fastest wins.
-- Kathy Sierra   advice | computers


The best friend of a nation is he who faithfully rebukes her for her sins — and her worst enemy, who, under the specious and popular garb of patriotism, seeks to excuse, palliate, and defend them.
-- Frederick Douglass   politics


A new week always seems such a hopeful thing before reality sets in.
-- Mike Gunderloy   general | funny


Your users don't give a damn what framework and language you're using. The only people who care about that stuff are other software developers. And God help you if your users are software developers; then you're really in trouble.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers


One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
-- A. A. Milne   general


Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
-- Samuel McChord Crothers   general


The designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. ... If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.
-- Donald Knuth   computers | writing


There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.
-- Anna Sewell   religion


We copy editors are the skeptics, the nay-sayers, the fault-finders. We look at a text expecting to find it defective and are seldom disappointed.
-- John McIntyre   editing


One of the hazards of rearranging books is that it is nearly impossible to pick up a book without opening it and reading a bit. This may be pleasant and instructive, but it does rather slow the process down.
-- Bill Poser   general | funny


If proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.
-- Elmore Leonard   writing | editing


Making mistakes is inevitable, but repeating the same ones over and over doesn't have to be. You should endeavor to make all-new, spectacular, never-seen-before mistakes.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers | advice


Recognizing your shallowness is perhaps the most profound act of your intellectual life. It's the recognition that you're mortal, that you're busy, that you've got to survive in a cruel world, and that there's more to read, more to write, more to think about, and more to solve, than you could ever possibly manage in your lifespan.
-- Grant Campbell   advice


There's no point improving the implementation of a bad idea.
-- Raymond Chen   advice | computers


Any sentence containing the phrase the media will be an overbroad generalization, probably to score political points. On the left, the media are faceless tools of corporate interests, narcotizing the public into acceptance of mindless bourgeois-consumerist oppression. On the right the media are Marxist subversives undermining religion and morality by narcotizing the public into a porno-atheistical torpor.
-- John McIntyre   politics | writing


Top tip, spend time in front of your wife for some more analog experiences ;)
-- "Jimmy"   advice | computers


I have reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland
-- Paul Simon   general | religion


The more I learn from my teachers and mentors, the deeper I am in debt for all they have taught to me.
-- Rajesh Setty   general | education


Making it easy to do good stuff is obviously goodness; thinking about how to make it hard to do bad is actually more important.
-- Eric Lippert   computers | advice


So much of leadership is learning to give a damn about other people, something that us programmers are notoriously bad at. We may love our machines and our code, but our teammates prove much more complicated.
-- Jeff Atwood   computers


The perfect website is exactly one page, the one the visitor wants. But nearly every page on the web is about changing your mind--"There's more over here!"
-- Paul Ford   computers | writing | editing


When your abilities are modest, always hire smarter people.
-- John McIntyre   advice


Language is an invaluable support in our efforts to identify people to look down on.
-- John McIntyre   language


Some people may sit back and say, "I want to solve this problem" and they sit down and say, "How do I solve this problem?" I don't. I just move around in the mathematical waters, thinking about things, being curious, interested, talking to people, stirring up ideas; things emerge and I follow them up. Or I see something which connects up with something else I know about, and I try to put them together and things develop. I have practically never started off with any idea of what I'm going to be doing or where it's going to go. I'm interested in mathematics; I talk, I learn, I discuss and then interesting questions simply emerge. I have never started off with a particular goal, except the goal of understanding mathematics.
-- Michael Atiyah   general


I've tried management a time or three and ended up unhappy every time.
-- Mike Gunderloy   general | computers


Because novels don't get yanked out of the front of the brain, they can't be bullied into existence by increased focus or a Calvinist work ethic. A lot of what you need is in that great junkshop of memory and experience and emotion that's located in the back of the mind, and it's a place that can't be systematized, made orderly. You can't go in there looking for one thing and hope to find it. All you can do is browse, see what looks interesting, hold it up to the dim light and ask yourself what its relevance might be to the task at hand.
-- Richard Russo   writing


I'd always assumed that the people who lived in those fancy houses in the suburbs were financially better off than I was, and only once I'd joined them did I come to understand that it's all just a more sophisticated and elaborate way of being broke.
-- Jonathan Tropper   general


Like many people, I started blogging out of an urgent need to procrastinate.
-- Alex Ross   writing | funny


Why don't you go read about it and write a blog entry summarizing what you've learned?
-- Raymond Chen   writing | advice


We cannot allow engineers to build products for an idealized rational user when real humans are irrational: we must design for the way users actually behave.
-- Jakob Nielsen, "The Paradox of the Active User"   computers | general


Documentation is necessary, but users do NOT want to read it. If your users are asking you for more documentation, the lack of documentation is not really the problem. Your application is too complicated.
-- Scott Watermasysk   computers | writing


The grammar of the language can't be deduced from an appeal to "logic", but must be discovered by examining practice.
-- Arnold Zwicky   language


The main thing you don't learn with a CS degree is how to develop software, although you will probably build up certain muscles in your brain that may help you later if you decide that developing software is what you want to do.
-- Joel Spolsky   computers | education


As long as you don't write your own algorithm, secure encryption is easy.
-- Bruce Schneier   computers


If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
-- Charles Kettering   general | advice


I take the first approach that jumps into my mind and run with it, no matter how complicated it may be. This is the beauty of group work, because my overly elaborate and complicated solution usually ends up as inspiration for someone else's.
-- Son Zack   general | computers


What does it mean for a [computer] language to be powerful? It doesn't mean that you can write programs in a particular language that do things you can't do in some other language. Instead, the power of a language is a way of measuring how much the language helps you concentrate on the actual problem you wanted to solve in the first place, rather than having to worry about the constraints of the language.
-- Brian Harvey   computers


Dogs are my favorite role models. I want to work like a dog, doing what I was born to do with joy and purpose. I want to play like a dog, with total, jolly abandon. I want to love like a dog, with unabashed devotion and complete lack of concern about what people do for a living, how much money they have, or how much they weigh. The fact that we still live with dogs, even when we don't have to herd or hunt our dinner, gives me hope for humans and canines alike.
-- Martha Beck   general


The problem with most attempts to make products on the web is that developers assume that they only way to beat the competition is through laundry lists of new features. The reality is that people spend the majority of their time using the core of your product and ignore most of the extraneous fluff.
-- Steven Spalding   computers


Feature matrices suck. A feature matrix says: "Here is what everyone else is doing. To be competitive you must do the same." Where's the differentiation? Where's the innovation in doing exactly what everyone else does, ticking the boxes, shaving off one or two points in each row so you get the green tick?
-- Charles Miller   computers | general


One of the first rules of product design is that where possible, don't try to fight sociology. Moreover, if you are going to wage a war against human psychology, do it elegantly. Most Web 2.0 product design assumes that the world at large behaves in a way that it simply does not.
-- Steve Spalding   computers


[I]f once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.