Good engineering is characterized by gradual, stepwise refinement of products that yields increased performance under given constraints and with given resources.

But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.

A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do.

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.

A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.

C++ is an insult to the human brain

Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. (Or, sometimes known by] Grove [the head of Intel] giveth and Gates [the head of Microsoft] taketh away.)

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

It's important for me to live my life honestly.

We were once getting married. And I have loved you all this time- a century and a half. -Jem

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.

She transforms once again into someone carefree, and I transform into someone whose only care is her.

Essentialism: only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.

... romance is unsatisfactory as a religion. It is no use looking for the infinite in the eyes of another.

Everything a man writes about himself is instructive.

Two devils rose from the water, and flew off through the air, crying, 'Oh, oh, oh!' and turning one over another, in sportive mockery.

Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.