Quotes
This page is simply a collection of random quotes that I find inspirational.
Meta
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
– Steve Jobs
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
– Seneca
A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.
– E. M. Forster
If you are depressed, you are living in the past.
If you are anxious, you are living in the future.
If you are at peace, you are living in the present.–- Lao Tzu
Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
– Alan Kay
If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.
– Leslie Lamport
Victory belongs to the most tenacious.
– Roland Garros
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
– Heraclitus
Programming
The tools we use have a profound (and devious) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
—- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
– Alan Perlis
Lisp isn’t a language, it’s a building material.
– Ward Cunningham
Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.
– Eric S. Raymond, How to Become a Hacker
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
– Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Emacs
Emacs is undoubtedly the most powerful programmer’s editor in existence. It’s a big, feature-laden program with a great deal of flexibility and customizability. As we observed in the Chapter 14 section on Emacs Lisp, Emacs has an entire programming language inside it that can be used to write arbitrarily powerful editor functions.
– Eric S. Raymond, The Art of UNIX Programming
If you are a professional writer – i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed – Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.
– Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning … was the Command Line
Configuring Emacs is more of a lifestyle choice than a task that one completes.
– Stephen A. Ramsey
Movies
Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.
– Master Yoda, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
What we do in life, echoes in eternity.
– Maximus, Gladiator
Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back.
– Marcus Aurelius, Gladiator
Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to.
– Cicero, Gladiator
Books
The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.
-― Tyler Durden (Chuck Palahniuk), Fight Club
Finance & Business
I can’t tell you how to get rich quickly. I can only tell you how to get poor quickly: by trying to get rich quickly.
– André Kostolany
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
– Warren Buffett, Letter to shareholders for the year 1989
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
– Warren Buffett, Letter to shareholders for the year 2008
Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.
– Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor