Favorite Quotes

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

• He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
  • Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.
  • Nikos Kazantzakis
• What’s measured improves
  • Peter Drucker
• Controls are needed for both measurable and nonmeasurable events. Drucker’s concern was that measurable events would gradually overshadow nonmeasurable results, yet the latter are frequently more important.
  • William Cohen, The Practical Drucker
• Choosing the correct metrics and making decisions about them are incredibly important in their use for control, in both the day-to-day and strategic sense. Choice of the wrong metrics, or if their collection is organized and analyzed incorrectly, can lead to a multitude of problems while failing in their purpose of rendering control.
  • William Cohen, The Practical Drucker
• In IBM there’s a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand lines of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it’s sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 50K-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS/2, how much they did. How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to convince them - hey, if we have - a developer’s got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he’s made something smaller and faster, less K-LOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that’s the methodology. Ugh! Anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing.
  • Steve Ballmer
• If I were wrong, one would be enough.
  • Albert Einstein, in response to the pamphlet, “100 Authors Against Einstein”
• … computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty.
  • Knuth, “Computer Programming as an Art”
• We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
  • Aesop
• Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Just remember – when you think all is lost, the future remains.
  • Bob Goddard
• Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
  • Abraham Lincoln
• Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
  • Calvin Coolidge
• Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

• George Gordon Noel Byron

• There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
  • Niels Henrik David Bohr
• When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue–you sell him a whole new life.
  • Christopher Darlington Morley
• We meet no Stranger, but Ourself.
  • Emily Dickinson
• Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, / Or what’s a heaven for?
  • Robert Browning
• The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
  • Aristotle
• In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.
  • Lao Tzu
• Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.
  • Mahatma Gandhi
• If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
  • Derek Bok
• Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
  • Benjamin Franklin
• There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties… The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
  • Charles Darwin
• Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
  • George Santayana
• As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
  • Albert Schweitzer
• When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out.
  • Otto von Bismarck

• Hofstadter’s Law: The time and effort required to complete a project are always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

• To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty of nature. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.
  • Richard Feynman
• Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
  • Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. [The Mythical Man-Month]
• I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
  • Blaise Pascal
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
  • Aristotle
• Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.
  • Irish Proverb
• To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
  • David Viscott
• There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust.
  • Sophocles
• Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
  • Pablo Picasso
• Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
  • Honore de Balzac
• When you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet.
  • Chinese Proverb
• A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside of us.
  • Franz Kafka
• A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
  • Spanish proverb
• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The words of truth are always paradoxical.
  • Lao Tzu
• Fill the seats of justice with good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is.
  • Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854)
• They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
  • Nathaniel Lee (on being consigned to a mental institution, circa 17th c.)
• He who does not attempt to make peace / When small discords arise, / Is like the bee’s hive which leaks drops of honey / Soon, the whole hive collapses.
  • Nagarjuna (c. 100-200 A.D.)
• Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
  • Leonardo Da Vinci
• What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
  • Goethe
• Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
  • T. S. Eliot
• Science is built with facts as a house is with stones–but a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
  • Jules Henry Poincare
• Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
  • Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906]
• The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, “Thus far and no farther.”
  • Ludwig van Beethoven
• Write the bad things that are done to you in the sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble.
  • Arabian wisdom
• Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.
  • Peter Drucker
• The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
  • John Milton
• I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.
  • Voltaire
• The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
• A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
  • Epictetus
• Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the moutains… But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree… when thou canst at a moment’s notice retire into thyself.
  • Marcus Aelius Aurelius
• History will be kind to me for I intend to write it
  • Winston Churchill
• You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one-well, at least one and a half, I’m sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities.
  • Winston Churchill
• Computers are useless. They can only give you answers
  • Pablo Picasso
• Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it
  • Max Frisch
• Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
  • Benjamin Franklin
• A half truth is often a great lie.
  • Benjamin Franklin
• One paper, which I wrote for Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of lightning with electricity, I sent to Dr. Mitchel, an acquaintance of mine, and one of the members also of that society, who wrote me word that it had been read, but was laughed at by the connoisseurs.
  • Benjamin Franklin, on a paper being rejected by the prestigious Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge
• What works is better than what looks good. The looks good can change, but what works, works.
  • Ray Eames
• I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent – their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy – they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent – he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.
  • Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
• He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?
  • Lord Byron