But you can't stop knowing something, can you?

The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.

We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins

To be a programmer is to develop a carefully managed relationship with error. There's no getting around it. You either make your accomodations with failure, or the work will become intolerable.

Software engineering is not about right and wrong but only better and worse

I've always written. I'm from an older generation of programmers [who] did not come out of engineering. [A]ll sorts of people were drawn in from the social sciences and humanities.

I don't know where anyone ever got the idea that technology, in and of itself, was a savior. Like all human-created 'progress, ' computers are problematic, giving and taking away.

People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true.

Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system.

Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.

Slaves in the past were captured by force

A little kingdom I possess Where thoughts and feelings dwell And very hard the task I find Of governing it well.

Illogical thinkers throw names and slurs around because they have no arguments with which to rebut their opponents. Rational people have to keep hammering their points home.

What makes everything one is the style.

You've just got to focus on what you have to do.

O proudly name their names who bravely sail| To seek brave lost in Arctic snows and seas!

But the LORD Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness.

She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches' brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike.

There is no other way to change your physical reality but by changing your thoughts.

By Heaven, I love thee better than myself