Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. -- Aeschylus
”It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber.
-- Motel of the Mysteries, David Macaulay
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. -- Mark Twain, possibly
Straviag, to wonder aimlessly to be with the land.
we are gods and might as well get good at it -- Stewart Brand
Koren on wabi sabi: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.
As you get further and further from the car park the breathable jackets get shabbier, the hats are bobble instead of fleece, the boots are scratched and old. Four hours out you meet the breeches. Eight hours out it's the rucksack fixed with string. And on the furthest, loneliest hilltop, as the stars come out, is the chap or lassie in the bag. -- Ronald Turnbull, The Book of the Bivvi
the programmer's lament.
This computer is no good. I wish that they would sell it. Instead of doing what I want, It does just what I tell it.
Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. -- Thomas A Edison
The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. -- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
We build our computers the way we build our cities—over time, without a plan, on top of ruins. -- Ellen Ullman, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology
Do not think what you want to think until you know what you ought to know. -- Mr. John Crow, Reader in English at King’s College London
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. -- Edsger Dijkstra
People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine. -- Banksy
The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves. -- Ada Lovelace, 1843
Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. -- John Tukey
On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection. -- David Wheeler