Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.

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.

You give your way out of poverty but you sacrifice your way to wealth.

The things that I make are that which a person will make. They're not meant to mimic nature. They are nothing but the result of a hand of a person.

People learn from people they love.

Whether you think you will succeed or not, you are right.

I'm a big fan of revenge, I think [Sweeney Todd] it's a story of a man who clearly has obsessions to avenge the horror that happened to him.

I mean, I've done musicals, but it's not my best thing.

All of us admire people we don't like and like people we don't admire.

Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of.

You have to just dive over the edge. You haven't got time to mess about.

You don't need more time in your day. You need to decide.