I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
             -- Ralph W. Emerson

I hear and forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
             -- Chinese Proverb

A person who can, within a year, solve x² - 92y² = 1 is a mathematician.
             -- Brahmagupta (Indian Mathematician, 598 AD - 670 AD)
                   

That is whole, this is also whole, the whole or fullness originates again from the whole; if one takes away the whole out of whole only the whole remains.
             -- Shukla Yajurveda (Indian Text, 1400 - 1000 BCE)
                   

As the sun eclipses the stars by its brilliancy, so the man of knowledge will eclipse the fame of others in assemblies of the people if he proposes algebraic problems, and still more if he solves them.
             -- Brahmagupta (Indian Mathematician, 598 AD - 670 AD)
                    (Quoted in F Cajori, A History of Mathematics)

The problem with "What You See Is What You Get" is that what you see is all you've got.
             -- Brian Kernighan

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
             -- Ecclesiastes

But in fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illlusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason conforms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. .... Even in the most purely logical realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.              -- Bertrand Russell (Mysticism and Logic)

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.              -- John Maynard Keynes

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in 7 years.
             -- Mark Twain

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity
             -- C.A.R. Hoare

As far as laws refer to reality they are not certain and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality.
             -- A. Einstein.

Either you believe in the law of excluded middle or you don't.

Ultimately one has to teach oneself.              -- David A. Plaisted

Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
             -- Robert Frost
                    (From the poem: The Road not Taken)

Elegance [in programming] is not optional.              -- Richard A. O'Keefe

Big shots are little shots who keep shooting.

Genius is only the power of making continuous effort.

Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration.              -- Thomas A. Edison

Every science begins with the observation of striking events like thunderstorms or fevers, and soon establishes rough connections between them and other events, such as hot weather or infection. The next stage is a stage of exact observation and measurement, and it is often very difficult to know what we should measure in order to best explain the events we are investigating. In the case of both thunder- storms and fevers the clue came from measuring the lengths of mercury columns in glass tubes, but what prophet could have predicted this? Then comes a stage of innumerable graphs and tables of figures, the dispair of students, the laughing-stock of the man in the street. And out of this intellectual mess there sudden crystallizes a new and easily grasped idea, the idea of a cyclone or an electron, a bacillus or an antitoxin, and everybody wonders why it had not been thought of before.
             -- The Future of Biology
                   J.B.S. Haldane

The bigger the real-life problems, the greater the tendency for the discipline to retreat into a reassuring fantasy-land of abstract theory and technical manipulation.
                   -Tom Naylor

A genuine first-hand religious experience ... is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.
             -- The Varieties of Religious Experience
                   William James

For a successful technology, reality must take prededence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
             -- Report on the Challenger Disaster.
                   Richard P. Feynman,

This leads to the paradox that the more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwords. The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, faculties, skills. The more familiar the parts, the more striking the new whole.
             -- Koestler

Excellent work is the product of EXCESSIVE revision.

   First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.
   Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist.
   Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.
   Then they came for me - and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.
                   -- Pastor Martin Niemöller

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that ever word tell.
             -- The Elements of Style
                   W. Strunk and E.B. White

If you can see the bandwagon, it is already too late.
             --Warren Buffet

Engineer is a man who can do for a dime what any fool can do for a dollar.
             --Anonymous

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
             -- Einstein

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.
             -- J. Addison

I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naivete, unburdened by conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.
             -- Harish Chandra (Mathematician)
                   Quoted in R Langlands, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 31 (1985) 197 - 225.

Ultimately one has to teach oneself.
             -- David Plaisted

If we knew the future, it will be here now.
             -- Frank Harary

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
             -- Statement found on most financial literature

If you want to get something done, find a busy man.

SOME THAT I MADE UP:

Confidence is not about being always right, but always knowing what to do when things go wrong.

Responsibility is measured not by who gets credit if things go right, but by who gets blamed if things go wrong.

The three most important things in programming: notation, notation, notation.
            (with apologies to all real estate agents)