But I will argue that knowing complete product requirements up front is a quite rare exception, not the norm.

The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.

System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.

She would let a speeding automobile hit her to show them all how unloved she was.

I always believed that If I’m not carrying at least a slight poetically painful crack in my heart I’ve been cheated by nature.

We wanted to solve robot problems and needed some vision, action, reasoning, planning, and so forth. We even used some structural learning, such as was being explored by Patrick Winston.

Art knows, life applies knowledge; art feels, life acts.

Everybody is wondering what Paris Hilton will be doing next, and hell, I'm wondering what she did before.

I'd like you to know that I have forgiven him. Again and again. Once done, course, back comes the Enemy to persecute and persecute, and I must ante up to God and forgive yet again.

Sincere composers believe in God.

Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was-like eating an egg without salt.

Ah, the pretty whisperers! It was very well When the leaves were thick and green, awhile ago-- Leaves are secret-keepers; but since the last leaf fell There is nothing hidden from the eyes below.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.