Process improvement is most valuable in raising the floor of a community's practice.

The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.

System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.

...much of modern military tactics is geared toward maneuvering the enemy into a position where they can essentially be massacred from safety. (pg. 140)

He picks the lock of her dreams with her own hairpin.

For the longest time, I saw them as the end of my journey, but now I think they were always meant to represent the beginning of yours.

We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them.

True optimism is not the prospect of control over pain or elimination of it but survival through it.

I know of no better name than Anarchism.

The truth isn't meant to be pretty, that's for beauty pageants.

You don't have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don't have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.

One writes to teach, to move or to delight.

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.