Art is not a mirror held up to reality; it is a hammer used to shape it.
— Bertold Brecht
Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Programming is an exercise in overcoming how wrong you’ve been in the past. At first you’ll overcome the syntax errors, then you’ll overcome the structural errors, and then you’ll come to align your code with the standards of a greater community and you’ll feel safe and like you’ve made it. You haven’t – you’re still wrong because you’re always wrong. You are playing a game you cannot win. And let’s face it – if it was a game you could win you’d not be playing at all.
— Guy English, “I’ve Been Wrong Before,” Kicking Bear
[W]e have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which “now” was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents’ have insufficient “now” to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volitile. […] We have only risk management. The spinning of a given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.
— William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.
— Robert Heinlein
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
— Carl Jung
Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
— Alan Kay, “Computer Software,” Scientific American
There is a land shining with goodness where each man protects his brother’s dignity as his own, where war and want have ceased and all races live under the same law of love and honor.
It is a land bright with truth, where a man’s word is his pledge, and falsehood is banished, where children sleep safe in their mother’s arms and never know fear or pain. It is a land where kings extend their hands in justice rather than reach for the sword; where mercy, kindness, and compassion flow like deep water over the land, and men revere virtue, revere truth, revere beauty, above comfort, pleasure, or selfish gain. A land where peace reigns in the hearts of men, where faith blazes like a beacon from every hill, and love like a fire from every hearth, where the True God is worshiped and his ways acclaimed by all …
There is a golden realm of light, my son. And it is called the Kingdom of Summer.
— Stephen R. Lawhead, Merlin
Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
— Charles Lindbergh
Never underestimate that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.
— Baron Munchausen (John Neville), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
… All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
— Edgar Allen Poe
If failure is not an option, then neither is creativity. If failure is not an option, don’t waste time with trust. If failure is not an option, you’d better stay in beta forever. If failure is not an option, you can only keep doing what has worked in the past. If failure is not an option, you can act only on things you can measure. If failure is not an option, neither is experimentation. If failure is not an option, life lacks dimension.
If failure is not an option, success is not an option.
— Andy Rutledge, “Failure,” UnitVerse
Adults are just obsolete chidren, and the hell with them.
— Dr. Seuss
The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many Paths and errands meet
And wither then? I cannot say.
Still round the corner there may be
A new road or a secret gate.
And though I oft have passed them by,
A time will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
— J.R.R. Tolkein
If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who rest assured are not dumb and are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV Spring Break on Primary Day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.
— David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone, April 13, 2000
There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our Constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.
The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.
This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.
— Rabbi Sherwin Wine
… “fire” does not matter, “earth” and “air” and “water” do not matter. “I” do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.
— Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light