We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users.

You can achieve a shallow local maximum with A/B testing - but you'll never win hearts and minds.

Teaching peers is one of the best ways to develop mastery.

In software, we rarely have meaningful requirements. Even if we do, the only measure of success that matters is whether our solution solves the customer's shifting idea of what their problem is.

If you don't have people that care about usability on your project, your project is doomed.

Writing code? That's the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use - now that's the hard stuff.

The whole HTML validation exercise is questionable, but validating as XHTML is flat-out masochism. Only recommended for those that enjoy pain. Or programmers. I can’t always tell the difference.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Practicing an attitude of gratitude spills over to acts of generosity.

The auditorium, named after a dead Queens politician is windowless in honor of the secrecy in which he lived and, probably, the bank vaults he frequented.

Quarrel with a friend - and you are both wrong.

Years ago, I thought old age would be dreadful, because I should not be able to do things I would want to do. Now I find there is nothing I want to do after all

When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.

I try to get a vision of the future, and then I try to figure out where the discontinuities are.

I loved Sherlock Holmes as a kid, but I remember being disappointed when he'd come up with these simple explanations for these complex mysteries.

I always wanted everyone to like me. I wanted the city of Pittsburgh to be proud of me. But my first few seasons, I could to count the number of people on my bandwagon on one finger.

Freedom of press and freedom of speech: What a blessing for a country while in the hands of honest, patriotic men; what a curse if in the hands of designing demagogues.