Keith Devens .com

The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: "I did not have time." — WestHost weekly newsletter 14 Feb 2003
When your enemy is making a very serious mistake, don't be impolite and disturb him. — Napoleon Bonaparte (allegedly)
Got truth decay? Brush up on your Bible! — a billboard in New Brunswick, NJ
May you live in interesting times — Ancient chinese proverb
A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure. — Hugh Kingsmill
There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. — C. A. R. Hoare
And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. — Joel Spolsky
Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us? — Adolf Hitler (in a speech at Regensburg on June 6th, 1937)
Есть Два Цвета: Черный И Белый, А Есть Оттенки, Которых Больше. ('There are two colors: black and white. Others are just shades.') — unknown
The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. — Larry Wall (Programming Perl)
It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. — David St. Hubbins (This is Spinal Tap)
"Let me get this straight. He met with terrorists? Oh, that's good." — John Edwards (on finding out John Kerry's own diary testified to him meeting with North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (NIV) — Paul (Romans 8:28)
And this too, shall pass. — often attributed to Abraham Lincoln
All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky. — Joel Spolsky (The Law of Leaky Abstractions)
XML wasn't designed to be edited by humans on a regular basis. — Guido van Rossum
Premature abstraction is an equally grevious sin as premature optimization. — me
You can have premature generalization as well as premature optimization. — Bjarne Stroustrup
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US. — Zero Wing
He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (NIV) — Matthew 5:45
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. — Alan Perlis
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing. — Alan Perlis
"Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after." — Giles (BtVS: Lie to Me)
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. (I have made this letter so long only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.) — Blaise Pascal (Lettres Provinciales)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. — Blaise Pascal (attributed)
... be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. — Jon Postel (RFC 793)
Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it ain't fun -- it's entertainment. — David Mamet (as relayed by Joss Whedon)
"I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." — 'Wash' (Serenity, 2005)
... we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the question. Thus we must... forgo all justification of our expectations about the future. — Bertrand Russell ("On Induction" in The Problems of Philosophy)
If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as *lines produced* but as *lines spent*. — Edsger Dijkstra
Although at the beginning the paradigm was worth consideration, now the entire effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception on the ideology of its champions. — Hubert P. Yockey (Information Theory and Molecular Biology, p336)
Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and "great thinking". It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice. — Steven Den Beste
Omit needless words. — William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. — Galileo Galilei
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about. — unknown
A society that puts equality -- in the sense of equality of outcome -- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. — Milton Friedman (Thomas Sowell: A Conflict of Visions, p130)
Philosophy: the finding of bad reasons for what one believes by instinct. — Brave New World (paraphrased)
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C.S. Lewis
The very name "selection" implies that you're choosing between two or more variants. So that means that the end result is extinction of one in favour of the other. Natural selection never increases the number of variants; it only decreases them. So my problem with it was, "how does a mechanism that makes less and less end up making more and more"? The answer obviously is, it doesn't. That leaves chance mutations as the only source of the new information. You have to have all these new genes coding for new features, all interacting precisely with one another, continually arising as animals get more complex, by chance. To believe that, you have to have a lot of faith. It's certainly not something I see in my work as a zoologist. — Dr. Walter Veith
There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war. — George Washington
"Fools! Don't they know that tears are a woman's most effective weapon?" — Catwoman (The Batman TV Series, episode 83)
... it's a lot faster to not do something than to do it. — Dan Sugalski
"It's like a condom; I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it." — some chick in Alien vs. Predator, when asked why she always carries a gun
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. — Alan Perlis
C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce. — Scott McKay
*What in our history together makes you think I'm capable of something like that?* — Owen Wilson's character in Shanghai Knights
Simplicity takes effort-- genius, even. — Paul Graham
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. — Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke
Show, don't tell. — unknown
Don't be an asshole. — Jason Hoffman
I remember the first time I met a real crazy. And what I mean is someone that you wouldn't think was crazy. — Jason Hoffman
All warfare is based on deception. — Sun Tzu (The Art of War (I.18))
in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? — David (Psalm 56:4)
Linux is only free if your time has no value — Jamie Zawinski
The wheels turn slow, but when they do, they grind. — Micah
Code is poetry. — wordpress.org
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. — Rush (Freewill)
All I want is to have my peace of mind. — Boston (Peace of Mind)
Well, "actual" compliance means bug-free. That's hard to assure in a system of the size of a CL. This is the reason I created the term "purports to conform", which a lot of implementations do. In effect, what that means is "willing to receive bug reports where non-conformance is detected". I think in practice the notion of purporting to conform is much more meaningful than the notion of actual conformance. In fact, it's theoretically possible to actually conform without intending to and without a commitment to continuing to be that way on an ongoing basis... or even without detecting the fact. It's the commitment that matters, not the "incidental" fact. — Kent M. Pitman
YAGNI: You ain't gonna need it. — XP slogan
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. — Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. — Alfred North Whitehead (Introduction to Mathematics)
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. — Cicero
Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche
We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice. — Hierocles
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil. — Robert Heinlein
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. — Henry David Thoreau
The reason to do animation is caricature. Good caricature picks out the essense of the statement and removes everything else. It's not simply about reproducing reality; It's about bumping it up. — Brad Bird, writer and director, The Incredibles (The Incredibles DVD, behind the scenes, character design)
Mistakes were made. — Ronald Reagan
Don't panic. — Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence. — Napoleon Bonaparte
Less isn't more; just enough is more. — Milton Glaser
"To know what *would* have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that." — C.S. Lewis (Aslan, in Prince Caspian, Chapter 10)
Mistakes are as serious as the results they cause. — House (The Mistake – ep 30)
I would rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist who proves to be right. The former sometimes wins, but never the latter. — "Hoots"
You can't do anything worthwhile without pissing somebody off. — I forget
"What is truth?" — Pontius Pilate
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. — Ferris Bueller
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
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do. — C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair, ch 2)
Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. — Philip Greenspun (Greenspun's Tenth Rule)
I think I was basically a victim of what I like to call 'dumb people' -- people who are never going to trust anything except what they already know. — Joss Whedon (on the cancellation of Firefly)
Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist. — Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker)
"You cannot want wrong things any more, now that you have died, my son," said Aslan. — C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair, ch 16)
Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics. — G. H. Hardy (A Mathematician's Apology)
I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't tell is whether they have any kind of taste." — Paul Graham
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. — Dennis Miller
Cause she's a better fighter than you are, that's why. She's younger, she's stronger, and she's more experienced. Now, what are you gonna do about it? — "Frankie Dunn" (Million Dollar Baby)
I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent! — Horton (Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. — David (Psalm 23)
Mongol General: "What is best in life?" Conan: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women." — Conan (Conan the Barbarian)
And certainly both Horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could, which is not quite the same thing. — C.S. Lewis (The Horse and His Boy, ch 10)
"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own." — C.S. Lewis (The Horse and His Boy, ch 11)
If you rely on scale up, you’ll probably get killed. You should always be relying on scale out. — Phil Smoot
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Quincy Adams
Man up! — Justin
This is not The Greatest Song in the World, oh no. This is just a tribute. — Tenacious D
What you are thunders so loudly that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. — Max Ehrmann (Desiderata)
The direct pursuit of happiness is a recipe for an unhappy life. — Donald Campbell
Follow the path. — me
"It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people." — Randy S. Nelson (dean of Pixar University)
"Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant." — Randy S. Nelson (dean of Pixar University)
Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. — Benjamin Franklin
Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged – people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can not. Everything is deeply intertwingled. — Ted Nelson
real software ships. — John Gruber
"For a while he didn't think it was possible. Then, once he got over that..." — GameSpy on Will Wright's "Spore" video game
That's all I have to say about that. — Forrest Gump
Nonsense on stilts! — Derived from Jeremy Bentham
That is because you crazy! — Ikea
Communicating badly and then acting smug when misunderstood is not cleverness. — Randall Munroe (xkcd)
REMEMBERS- HEEL BARES DURID! BARE DURIDS IS STORNG FREND! — Alamo
Ever wish you could freeze frame a moment in your day, and look at it and say "this is not my life"? — Daniel (Mrs. Doubtfire)
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection. — Butler Lampson
LOOT THE DOG — anyone who's ever raided MC
Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. — John Mason (The Rock)
In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like you do in this country. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (speech at Columbia University, 9/24/07)
I have the strength of a bear... that has the strength of two bears! — Sealab 2021
That which yields, is not always weak. — Jacqueline Carey (Kushiel's Dart)
QUOTING THE KEYLOGGER TO PISS PEOPLE OFF WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT — Frostituté, Dragonblight (WoW Forums)
I was always told, that if I ain't gonna be part of the greatest, I gotta be the greatest myself. — Busta Rhymes
The status is *not* quo. — Dr. Horrible
I'm afraid of happy people. They're chemically unbalanced. — Shirley Manson