“The obstacle is the path.”

        — Zen Proverb

“Serendipity is not randomness, serendipity […] is unexpected relevance.”

        — Jeff Jarvis, This Week in Google

“One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs – but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.”

        — Charles P. Issawi

“Depression means you cannot enjoy cats on the Internet.”

        — Paul Fenwick (watch @pjf’s five minute talk on YouTube)

“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

        — Michelangelo Buonarroti

“It was pretty much an accident because I didn’t mean it!”

        — Raven Hinton, aged 8

“Existential threats don’t scare us. We’re librarians.”

        — Bethany Nowviskie #

“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”

        — George E. Woodberry

“As long as a word remains unspoken, you are its master once you utter it, you are its slave.”

        — Solomon Ibn Gabirol

“The three horrors of modern life – talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.”

        — Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

“It’s not whether you win or lose – but whether I win or lose.”

        — Sandy Lyle

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

        — Leo Tolstoy

“My sister taught me everything I really need to know, and she was only in sixth grade at the time.”

        — Linda Sunshine

“Give someone a program, and you’ll frustrate them for a day. Teach someone to program, and you’ll frustrate them for a lifetime.”

        — Unknown

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”

        — Marshall McLuhan

“Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”

        — Martin Heidegger

“We do not inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.”

        — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

        — Unknown

“Men are taught to apologise for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.”

        — Lois Wyse

“I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.”

        — Bjarne Stroustrup

“Never mistake motion for action.”

        — Ernest Hemingway

“Dogs with thumbs would make you coffee, cats with thumbs would steal your car.”

        — Richard Stevens (@rstevens)

“There’s much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.”

        — Diana Trilling

“If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.”

        — Alan Cooper

“It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion.”

        — William Ralph Inge

“Three words, eight letters, three syllables, five vowels, three consonants, two nouns, one emotion, many meanings, a big lie, a rare truth: I LOVE YOU!”

        — MJ (@_iamMJ)

“The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

        — Unknown

“Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.”

        — Rita Mae Brown

“I love that sound a metaphor makes as it begins to fall apart.”

        — Mark Ryall (@markryall)

“I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.”

        — Sigmund Freud

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

        — Richard Buckminster Fuller

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

        — Greek proverb

“If nothing changed, there’d be no butterflies.”

        — Unknown

“I’m toying with the idea of becoming a useful member of society.”

        — Wally from Dilbert, by Scott Adams

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you just might miss it.”

        — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

“Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.”

        — David Cain

“Never tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.”

        — Unknown

“The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.”

        — Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic

“On the eighth day God created twitter and then all hell broke loose.”

        — Marcus Brown

“People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.”

        — Anne Tyler

“Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.”

        — Unknown

“No matter how big and bad you are, when a two year old hands you a toy phone, you answer it.”

        — Unknown

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

        — George Bernard Shaw

“Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.”

        — Kenyan proverb

“What one sees depends on how one sees.”

        — Søren Kierkegaard

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”

        — Plutarch

“Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.”

        — J. C. Watts

“You can’t plough a field by turning it over in your mind.”

        — Irish Proverb

“A library is infinity under a roof.”

        — Gail Carson Levine

“The wowser mistakes the world for a penitentiary and themselves as the warden.”

        — Australian observation

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.”

        — Lillian Hellman

“Capslock does not make technical support want to help you more.”

        — Lindsay (Trampoline Sept 2010)

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

        — Satchel Paige

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

        — Francis Bacon

“My project is 90% done. I hope the second half goes as well.”

        — Scott W. Ambler (@scottwambler

“Change is inevitable. Unless you need it to feed the parking meter. Then it’s nowhere to be found.”

        — Caprice Crane

“Change is not a bolt of lightning that arrives with a zap. It is a bridge built brick by brick, every day”

        — Sarah Hepola

“I used to think I wasn’t a morning person, but things never got better after lunch.”

        — Wally from Dilbert by Scott Adams

“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread each day, and at last we cannot break it.”

        — Horace Mann

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

        — Leonardo da Vinci

“PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.”

        — Jon Ribbens

“A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong.”

        — Rodney Dangerfield

“Joy, I think, is a tougher, gutsier emotion than despair. We’re not going to mope our way to a brighter future or better lives.”

        — Alex Steffen (@AlexSteffen)

“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”

        — Luciano de Crescenzo

“As a nation we are dedicated to keeping physically fit – and parking as close to the stadium as possible.”

        — Bill Vaughan

How can we call ourselves “evolved” when signs are needed to remind people to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom?

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

        — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

“I named my kitten Rose: fur soft as a petal, claws sharper than thorns.”

        — Astrid Alauda

“He was jeopardising his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

        — Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”

        — Erin Major

“I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the 21st century is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.”

        — Jason Gorman (@jasongorman)

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

        — Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

        — Henry Ford

“The diminutive chains of habit are seldom heavy enough to be felt till they are too strong to be broken.”

        — Samuel Johnson

“Admit your errors before someone else exaggerates them.”

        — Andrew V. Mason

“The (computer) mouse is probably the narrowest straw you could try and suck all of human expression through.”

        — Joy Mountford

“Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.”

“All glory comes from daring to begin.”

        — Eugene F. Ware

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

        — Samuel Beckett

“Eagles may soar high, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.”

        — John Benfield

“My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.”

        — Oscar Wilde

“Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.”

        — Charles Schulz

“Often we don’t really need advice or guidance from each other. Sometimes we just need a friend to deposit courage into our soul.”

        — Mike Foster

“Fear not that life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.”

        — John Henry Cardinal Newman

“We want structures that serve people, not people serving structures.”

        — May 1968 Graffiti #

“Like I’ve always said, love wouldn’t be blind if the braille weren’t so damned much fun.”

        — Armistead Maupin, Maybe the Moon

“The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.”

        — George Bernard Shaw

“And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”

        — Erica Jong

“Happiness is not a reward – it’s a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment – it’s a result.”

        — Robert Ingersoll

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”

        — Plato

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

        — Lewis Smedes

“It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

        — Woody Allen

“No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is inside.”

        — D. H. Lawrence

“There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.”

        — Po Bronson

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true.”

        — James Branch Cabell

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

        — F. Scott Fitzgerald

“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.”

        — James Freeman Clarke

“Find love when you have time, and find time when you already found the one to love.”

        — Terry Pratchett

“The freedom of others extends mine infinitely.”

        — May 1968 Graffiti #

“Saints are sinners who kept on going.”

        — Robert Louis Stevenson

“I can picture in my mind a world without war and without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”

        — Jack Handey (@Thinking_Deep)

“The best possible company management is one that combines a sense of corporate greatness and destiny, with empathy for, and fidelity to, the average employee.”

        — Bill Hewlett and David Packard

“To avoid criticism , do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

        — Elbert Green Hubbard

“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”

        — Sandra Carey

“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

        — Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.”

        — Unknown

“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

        — Mark Twain

“Hardware without software is just heat.”

        — Doug Fisher

“Remember, good code is like a good joke: It needs no explanation.”

        — Unknown

“Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.”

“The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it.”

        — Joan Rivers

“There are only two kinds of [programming] languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.”

        — Bjarne Stroustrup

“A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.”

        — Unknown

“A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.”

        — Mistinguett

“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.”

        — Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Someday humanity will defeat Skynet by installing iTunes and McAfee on it.”

        — Lowell (@howtogeek)

“If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”

        — Russian Proverb

“On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.”

        — Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

“Well done is better than well said.”

        — Benjamin Franklin

“Vegetarian: A person who eats only side dishes.”

        — Gerald Lieberman

“No matter what it is I’m doing, there’s always about an 85% chance I’m supposed to be doing something else.”

        — Caprice Crane (@CapricecCrane)

“We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.”

        — Winston Churchill

“If you trip over a pun in your speaking it’s not so bad but to intentionally jump on one is a true offence.”

        — Graycie Harmon

“The ABC’s of Life: Accept differences; Be kind; Clear your browser history.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“I married beneath me - all women do.”

        — Nancy Astor

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career.”

        — George Bernard Shaw

“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”

        — Bertha Calloway

“Young people need models, not critics.”

        — John Wooden

“Rewriting is an opportunity to find new ways of coding old bugs, as well as exciting new bugs.”

        — Unknown

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”

        — Robert Heinlein

Your success really depends on how loosely you’re willing to define the word “success.”

        — Caprice Crane (@CapricecCrane)

“This crash always occured with the Skype toolbar, speaking of malware.”

        — Firefox Developer, Linux.conf.au 2012

“Sometimes when you trade tradition for progress you wind up with neither. This isn’t one of those occasions but still, it’s a catchy saying.”

        — In Plain Sight

“One irresponsible programmer can keep any five top-notch programmers busy.”

        — Eric Evans

“Labour disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labour.”

        — Ulysses S. Grant

“The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.”

        — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”

        — Charles M. Schulz

“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything, or nothing.”

        — Nancy Astor

“Do not repeat anything you will not sign your name to.”

        — Anonymous

“There are two rules for success: 1. Never tell everything you know.”

        — Roger H. Lincoln

“Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.”

        — Aaron Sorkin #

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.”

        — Benjamin Franklin

“Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.”

        — William Stafford

“Cleverness is not wisdom.”

        — Euripides

“Lo, I have wrangled with ftp and the command line and I have emerged victorious if slightly queasy.”

        — Sarah Stokely (@stokely)

“The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.”

        — Frances Willard

“If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.”

        — Unknown

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

        — Edmund Burke

“Thinking big generally scares everyone.”

        — Neil Gilmer

“There’s no thief like a bad movie.”

        — Sam Ewing

“There is now ten times as many lines of legal text about BusyBox than there is lines of source code.”

        — Bruce Perens, Linux.conf.au 2012

“A generous man forgets what he gives and remembers what he receives.”

        — Proverb

“It’s a sad and stupid thing to have to proclaim yourself a revolutionary just to be a decent man.”

        — David Harris

“There are those that avoid failure, and those that seek success; those that avoid complexity, and those that seek simplicity.”

        — Simon Harris (@haruki_zaemon)

/* Sometimes I believe the compiler ignores all my comments. */

        — Unknown Programmer

“Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.”

        — Mark Knopfler

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”

        — Nelson Mandela

“People are people through other people.”

        — African Proverb

“Out in the bush, the tarred road always ends just after the house of the local mayor.”

        — Australian observation

“Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.”

        — Jerry Rice

“Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.”

        — Beverley Nichols

“Children have more need of models than of critics.”

        — Carolyn Coats

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat.”

        — Lilly Tomlin

“In waking a tiger, use a long stick”

        — Mao Tse-Tung

“I praise loudly, I blame softly.”

        — Catherine the Great

“We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.”

        — Unknown

“Those that think it permissible to tell white lies soon grow colour blind.”

        — Austin O’Malley

“I don’t understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar.”

        — Matt Bailey (@mattb811)

“A man chases a woman until she catches him.”

        — American Proverb

“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.”

        — Archibald McLeish

“The two best weapons for fighting off the demons of fear: laughter and math. I’m lousy at math.”

        — Jake Adelstein (@jakeadelstein)

“A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position.”

        — Oscar Wilde

“For business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.”

        — Mark Twain

“Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.”

        — Voltaire

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”

        — Don Marquis

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”

        — Oscar Wilde

“Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.”

        — Charles Dickens

“Our marriage was built on mutual trust and a lot of acting ability.”

        — Unknown

“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.”

        — Henrik Ibsen

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.”

        — Erma Bombeck

“May you get to Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.”

        — Irish Blessing

“Indecision becomes decision with time.”

        — Unknown

“If you cannot win, make the one ahead of you break the record.”

        — Jan McKeithen

“Confusion is a renewable resource.”

        — Kent Beck (@KentBeck)

“The problem with quick and dirty, is that the dirty remains long after the quick has been forgotten.”

        — Steve C McConnell

“Progress always involves risks. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.”

        — Frederick B. Wilcox

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

        — Unknown

“To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.”

        — Reba McEntire

“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”

        — Mignon McLaughlin

“I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words.”

        — Ruth St. Denis

“Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

        — Edward Abbey

“It’s better to crash into a nap than to nap into a crash.”

        — Unknown

“Technology doesn’t make us dumb. It just allows us to make others aware of how dumb we are.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“If we decide the real world is wrong because it does not match our lab, we are not doing science, we are doing economics.”

        — Linux.conf.au 2012

“If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment.”

        — Voltaire

“If cats looked like frogs we’d realise what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.”

        — Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

(RIP)

“Grant me the serenity to accept the code I cannot change, the courage to refactor the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

        — Unknown

“A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.”

        — The Knights of Pythagoras

“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.”

        — Navajo Proverb

“Decaffeinated coffee is the devil’s blend.”

        — Unknown

“Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.”

        — Edward H. Harriman

“There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as more.”

        — Robert M. Hensel

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

        — Andre Gide

“The world doesn’t care how many times you fall down, as long as it’s one fewer than the number of times you get back up.”

        — Aaron Sorkin #

“The day Microsoft makes something that doesn’t suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners.”

        — Ernst Jan Plugge

“By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”

        — Socrates

“No matter what amazing things you accomplish or how fantastic you are, a cat will always think it is better than you.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.”

        — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.”

        — Mark Russell

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

        — Derek Bok

“Stupidity on the Internet is there for everyone to see for all times in perpetuity.”

        — Ron Kuby

“It takes a considerable amount of effort to learn Vim. It takes twice as much to unlearn it.”

        — john2x on Hacker News

“No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.”

        — Niels Bohr

Debt, n.

An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver.

        — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

“Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It’ll be the only one trying.”

        — Jack Lang

“Critical decisions need to be made as late as possible, but before they make themselves.”

        — Mary Poppendieck, YOW! 2010

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”

        — Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

“It requires less character to discover the faults of others than is does to tolerate them.”

        — J. Petit Senn

“When you’re in that voting booth with just your conscience and a pen, take the pen because that’s all you’ll ever get out of them.”

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

        — H. L. Mencken

“The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it’s more like a tired feeling.”

        — Paula Poundstone

“People can be taught to hate. And people can be taught to spell. But apparently, it’s one or the other.”

        — Caprice Crane

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”

        — Arthur Miller

“Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.”

        — Andre Gide

“I am no longer willing to drive toward the future, using the rear-view mirror as my means of navigation.”

        — Anthony Robbins

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

        — Frederick Douglass

“The more laws the more offenders.”

        — Thomas Fuller

“Chocolate is ground from the beans of happiness.”

        — Alexis F. Hope

“Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming, but we can choose which one to surf.”

        — Jonatan Mårtensson

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

        — Saint Francis of Assisi

“Religion is like a drug, in small doses it’s curative, in large, it’s addictive.”

        — Eli Gold, The Good Wife

“Life is a beta.”

        — Jeff Jarvis, TEDx NYED

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”

        — Colin Powell

“The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.”

        — Paul Fix

“Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.”

        — Samuel Butler

“If the claws didn’t retract, cats would be like Velcro.”

        — Bruce Fogle

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.”

        — Danny Kaye

“The law locks up the man who steals the goose from the common, but leaves the greater criminal loose who steals the common from the goose.”

        — Australian convict saying

“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.”

        — Sophia Loren

“A company that focuses solely on profits ultimately betrays both itself and society.”

        — Bill Hewlett and David Packard

“A library is thought in cold storage.”

        — Herbert Samuel

“A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.”

        — H. L. Mencken

“I’m afraid of no man, and very few women.”

        — Unknown

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

        — Isaac Asimov

“Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.”

        — Samuel Butler

“Depressed people think they know themselves, but maybe they only know depression.”

        — Mark Epstein

“Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.”

        — Bob Talbert