
Quotes - drdre2001
http://paulgraham.com/quo.html
======
monk_the_dog
I'll have to add some of these to my list of quotes that emacs greets me with.
Current list:

    
    
      (defvar scratch-quotes
      (list
       "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. - Mike Tyson"
       "Look, I made a hat...where there never was a hat. - Finishing the hat, Sondheim"
       "Just fucking figure it out."
       "The universe is not here to please you. - Charles Murtaugh"
       "Your life is your life. The gods await to delight in you. - Bukowski"
       "Join the force and get a pension. - Salesman"
       "Beware of things that are fun to argue. - Eliezer Yudkowsky"
       "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the result. - Winston Churchill"
       "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. - John Von Neumann"
       "Writing program code is a good way of debugging your thinking. - Bill Venables"
       "Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value. - Joe Biden quoting his father"
       "Most haystacks do not even have a needle. - Lorenzo"
       "Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory. - Daniel Bershader"
       "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. - George Eliot"
       "It is astonishing what foolish things a man thinking alone can come temporarily to believe. - Keynes"
       "The purpose of computing is Insight, not numbers. - Richard Hamming"
       "Work on stuff that matters. - Tim O'Reilly"
       "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect. - Teller"
       "You have to say something. It can't all be technique. - Woody Allen (on great actors)"
       ;; Paraphrased from a HN comment
       "Perfectionism is a failure to optimize across a complex goal space, settling, instead, on ignoring the difficult prioritisation problem in favor of over-optimizing a limited set of tangible and easily-defined goals over longer-run priorities" 
       ))

~~~
canoebuilder
_Don 't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what
you value._

That's really good. Particularly as it relates to non-financial budgets, such
as a time budget. In fact it immediately got me out of my chair and up for
some physical activity!

------
nindalf
I keep a list of quotes that I read from time to time

* When the winds of change blow, some people build walls while others build windmills. — Chinese proverb

* There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway

* If you love life, then don't waste time, for time is what life is made of. - Bruce Lee

* If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it - Cicero.

* Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. - Yeats

* Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. - Yeats

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Ben Franklin said it a while before Bruce Lee did...

~~~
camikazeg
* If you love life, then don't waste time, for time is what life is made of. - nindalf

------
hamstercat
"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for
machines to execute."

This. x1000. I've found that a lot of disagreement about ways to implement a
feature can be solved by keeping this in mind.

~~~
CalChris
"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for
machines to execute."

Not _this_. x1.

Now if _this_ were true, you would read these programs as you would
literature. But you don't. Instead, you only use these programs as you would a
tool and then complain when they don't do what you want them to do fast enough
or reliably enough.

In literature, you have expectations but not certainty about the ending. Only
with a bad tool do you expect anything but certainty about the ending. Indeed
the hallmark of a good program is that you don't have to read it to know how
it ends.

Another anti-parallel is that literature ( _literate programming_ ) admires
originality whereas good engineering admires plagiarism.

~~~
newsat13
I am possibly not the only one who prints out code and reads them?

~~~
protomyth
Did it for code reviews when I was code reviewing C[1]. It really does help.
Paper still has a place. Its amazing what you see on a page of paper that
doesn't get seen on the screen.

1) which, since I was doing the code reviews, I wasn't allowed to write any
production code, because who would review my code? :(

------
neduma
Any thoughts on the quote investigator?

That Wasn’t Mark Twain: How a Misquotation Is Born
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-
misquotation...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-
misquotations.html?_r=0)

------
_pius
Eagle eyed readers and veteran HN'ers will note that "Tara Ploughman" is an
anagram for "Not Paul Graham."

~~~
jbyers
A classic HN thread on the topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889)

~~~
jgrahamc
Oh damn, I've been on HN a long time.

------
michaelhoffman
> "I'm surrounded by postmodern idiots and blatherers. Your writings give me
> hope."

> \- email from a reader

That is... quite a quote.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Most amusing to me is that Maciej Ceglowski of idlewords.com would probably
say the exact opposite.

Some (start of) context:
[http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

Reading Maciej' comments about PG, HN, and Silicon Valley in general is a
wonderful cure to the kind of madness that can pervade the place.

------
athesyn
I find most quotes to be interesting sounding, but on deeper thinking
incredibly vague or pointless.

~~~
Xcelerate
^This is my new favorite quote.

~~~
HugoDaniel
^This is my new favorite quote.

------
AceJohnny2
> _" Many big people were chasing me. I didn't know what to do. So I thought I
> would surprise them and throw it."_ \- Garo Yepremian, Miami placekicker,
> after a disastrous attempt to throw a pass in the Super Bowl.

I don't understand this. What's the wisdom to be gleaned from this one?

~~~
pg_bot
There's something poetic about watching the play unfold.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-pxMm_UdY4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-pxMm_UdY4)

You can learn a few things from this play that I think would help you in life.
First is planning for the unexpected and knowing how to respond in a situation
where you're about to panic. Given the context of the situation you win almost
100% of the time if you just fall down and do nothing after securing the ball.
Great players recognize how to maximize their odds of winning, this rings true
in many facets of life.

Second the whole sequence of events is simply incredibly funny, and this quote
gives an answer to what everyone would ask after witnessing the play. "What
was that guy thinking?"

------
ScottBurson
> "It is said that there is a technical term for people who believe that
> little boys and little girls are born indistinguishable and are molded into
> their natures by parental socialization. The term is 'childless.'"

I have sometimes thought that one reason gay people might exist is that
they're God's way of skewering the conservative idea that gender roles are
absolutes fixed by nature. It occurred to me the other day that in the same
vein, transgender people might be Her way of skewering the liberal idea that
gender roles are total societal constructions.

------
prasath5s
I want to share some of quotes I see everyday:

1) The higher the mountain, the more treacherous the path - Frank Underwood

2) What you think, you become - Buddha

3) If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do
something you have never done

------
euske
"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form." \-- Vladimir Nabokov

I feel like I was born as a rebel.

------
anotherevan
Given we’re sharing quote lists, allow me to spruik[1] my own contribution —
Q4TD: Get one, per day. Available at the following places:

Twitter: [http://www.twitter.com/q4td](http://www.twitter.com/q4td)

Facebook:
[http://www.facebook.com/quote4theday](http://www.facebook.com/quote4theday)

Google Plus:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/110672212432591877153/posts](https://plus.google.com/u/0/110672212432591877153/posts)

RSS:
[https://q4td.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default](https://q4td.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)

Blog: [https://q4td.blogspot.com/](https://q4td.blogspot.com/)

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.” — Michel de
Montaigne

[1]
[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spruik](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spruik)

------
spking
"However little television you watch, watch less."

-David McCullough

Unless it's the HBO miniseries "John Adams", based on his book!

~~~
gaius
Or Westworld which is mindblowingly good!

~~~
awinter-py
Or the upcoming adams-westworld crossover where George III reveals that
america is a theme park, the revolution has been fought many times and memory-
wiped, and he only fought the war to get the americans past their julian
jaynes preconsciousness.

(Of course this is revealed through G-III interviewing a nude john adams on a
stool).

------
will_brown
I've completed 9 days of 31 consecutive days of half marathons, everyday I
take a picture of something inspirational/interesting on my run (easy on
miami's south beach) but I also add a quote of the day, I'll probably use Mark
Twain's quote today.

~~~
chatmasta
I ran xc/track in college, and I must say, that is likely a bad idea. You are
going to hurt yourself, unless you've slowly built up to this. You should
never increase your weekly mileage by more than 10% over the previous week.
But don't take my word for it, I'm sure your body will let you know in the
next week.

~~~
will_brown
it's funny for the last week I have been running my last 8 with Robert "the
raven" Kraft who is like the 6th or 7th leading streak runner - 8 miles a day
for 42+ years, thru Miami hurricanes; heat/humidity; even hail. Nearly
120,000miles (just shy of 5x around the earth) and at 67 years old people are
still waiting for him to stop just to say I told you so.

~~~
chatmasta
Yeah, I'm not saying it's dangerous to run 90 miles a week. It's dangerous to
_suddenly start_ running 90 miles a week.

Just looked that guy up though, I bet he's got some cool stories!

------
shintakezou
> "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for
> the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."

This one has serious implication, not only in the computer programming world,
of course.

------
dorianm
A few good ones:

[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020)

[http://rubyonrails.org/doctrine/](http://rubyonrails.org/doctrine/)

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

------
kkoomi
I spent a few months recently creating a quotes manager for iOS. Save and look
up quotes by author, rating, source and tag.

[0] Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqwsznp_EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqwsznp_EY)
[1] Website: [https://www.humanquote.com/](https://www.humanquote.com/)

------
tjalfi
Here is one that deserves to be more popular.

"Solving operating systems problems with hardware interrupts is a lot like
solving your own personal problems with heroin - at first it sorta works, but
after a while things just get out of hand." \- Fred B. Schneider, PhD

------
kristofferR
Here's my quote collection:
[https://www.evernote.com/pub/kristofferr/inspiringQuotes](https://www.evernote.com/pub/kristofferr/inspiringQuotes)

------
clairity
he quotes one of my favorite poems, which is a good one to be reminded of (the
whole poem, not just the quote) in these trying political times:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate
intensity.

\- Yeats, The Second Coming

~~~
jonstewart
The best lack all conviction... kinda like YC Unicorns?

------
podviaznikov
I started keeping all quotes/highlights from books I read
[https://podviaznikov.com/quotes](https://podviaznikov.com/quotes)

------
fhood
"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for
machines to execute."

\- Abelson & Sussman, SICP, preface to the first edition

I may need a tattoo of this. (joking but only slightly)

------
norswap
Since everyone's posting theirs, here is mine:
[http://qte.tumblr.com/](http://qte.tumblr.com/)

------
jonstewart
"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."

\-- George Bernard Shaw

It's a bit eye-rolling whenever a PG essay makes the top page here, but a page
of PG's favorite quotes on HN in days when the US slips into a novel blend of
kleptocracy and autocracy, the NYT notes the top five tech firms are basically
monopolies, and the most successful of the last decade's startups prove
fiscally inept at best, ethically-challenged at worst... well, poop.

~~~
zodiac
Well this wasn't submitted by pg nor (presumably) did he ask anyone to submit
or upvote this. What exactly are you complaining about?

~~~
jonstewart
I understand PG didn't submit it himself, but that it was submitted and
upvoted, well, who cares? I'm surprised enough people care to make it hit the
front page.

------
Nav_Panel
Completely broken on mobile. Looks fine if you request desktop mode.

~~~
macsj200
You broke the first rule of HN: don't criticize pg.

~~~
Nav_Panel
A critique of a program isn't a critique of the programmer.

~~~
coldtea
It's just not a critique of the programmer as a person -- but it very much is
a critique of a programmer as a programmer.

