Quotes

Here’s a collection of various quotes that I find interesting, motivating, or humbling:

Prevention is better than cure. — Unknown

I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. — Mewtwo

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. — Stephen Jay Gould

[Blindly] following ancient customs and traditions does not mean the dead are alive, but that the living are dead. — Ibn Khaldun

Soon, you will have forgotten all things. Soon, all things will have forgotten you. — Marcus Aurelius

Perfect is the enemy of good. — Voltaire

Sapere aude. — Horace

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.” — John Greenleaf Whittier

How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. — Winnie-the-Pooh

It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it will become rigid and stale. — Uncle Iroh

Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. — Edgar Allan Poe

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Meade

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. — Vincent van Gogh

Life is denied by lack of attention. — Nadia Boulanger

We just strive to reach that simplicity that lies beyond sophistication. — John Gardner

The constraints make the art.

In order to understand the world one has to turn away from it on occasion. — Albert Camus

Those who have a “why” to live can bear almost any “how.” — Victor Frankl

It’s not only something we have a moral duty to do. We also have a moral duty to do it well.

Innovation requires faith in society.

Don’t wish for anything except your health. — My grandmother

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when we look back everything is different? — C. S. Lewis

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love your customers’ problems, not the technology.

Developers are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame, often with the same result. — Neal Ford

If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger. — Dijkstra

The world awaits the right metaphor.

We will build good ships here — at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships. — Newport News Shipbuliding, 1912

Code less, not worse.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty that needs to be done. — Alan Turing

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. — Eliel Saarinen

Systems should be built to do useful things for real people. — Roger Needham

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” — G. K. Chesterton

A strategy should hurt. — Claire Hughes Johnson

Don’t wish your life away. — My mother