"The word "science" is ambiguous. It denotes two very different kinds of activities.
The first is the lofty intellectual ideal of solving a major problem, winning a Nobel, and getting your name in the history books. The second is the daily grind of reading other people's papers, providing peer review, writing grant proposals, and generally interfacing with other humans as a cog in a grand machine. The second is in some sense "easier" than the first. It's a lot more work, takes a lot more time, but it's a relatively straightforward (if often tedious) process that pretty much anyone can do with enough diligence. The first is a lot more fun, can often be done while showering, but is also fraught with risk and dependent on luck. You have to find just the right problem at just the right time under just the right circumstances. You can spend your time slogging, or you can spend your time buying intellectual lottery tickets and hope that lightning strikes, but you can't do both, at least not at at the same time.
The good news is that engaging in the daily slog is often (but not always) good preparation for and improves the odds of having lightning strike. So as a practical matter, that is often a good place to start. You might feel as if you're wasting your time reading everybody else's bullshit papers instead of writing the next Nobel prize winner yourself, but you're not. You're actually an essential part of the process even if you don't end up with the glory. And some day you just might be facing a really hard problem and go, "Wait a minute, this seems kinda like that thing I remember Dr. Arglebargle talking about three years ago, except that he missed this one detail..." and that's when the magic happens. " -- lisper (found on Hacker News)
"From my experience, I strongly do not recommended You and Your Research.
When I started my PhD I read this text as well. Of course I was very motivated of doing only important research. After some time I even found a nice research topic and worked on it for over two years. Even my advisor pointed out that it was a very novel and foundational idea.
At the same time, a colleague published three papers in top conferences. Their approach was basically to look at publications from the previous conference, apply some delta that they had an advantage over other teams and publish this in the next round.
Reviewers were happy because their publications already got cited and they understood the topic well.
Whereas my topic used an algorithm from the seventies that reviewers had to revisit. My topic didn't fit so well into the overall conference trend and so I still have way less citations than those incremental works.
When someone asks me if it's worth doing a PhD I tend to say that you need to like the direction in which science is going. If you don't like it and are rather rebellious, it's better to start a company." -- mo_42 (found on Hacker News)
"Dear Koichi,
I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories. Unfortunately your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.
You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. But at the same time I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) was on how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about). I am sorry, excuse me. I hope by this letter to correct it a little.
I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depends on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child’s toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the “grander” problems of quantum theory.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.
Best of luck and happiness.
Sincerely, Richard P. Feynman." -- Richard P. Feynman (found from How to graduate your PhD when you have no hope)
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." -- Jack Gilbert (from "Failing and Flying")
"The purpose of (scientific) computing is insight, not numbers." -– Richard Hamming
"Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity." -- Bruce Lee
"Learn. Document. Repeat. (A good algorithm for both research and teaching. Don't forget the second step!)" -- Tim Roughgarden (found on Twitter)
"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. You have to let it all go. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your Mind." -- Morpheus
"What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are." -- Morpheus (see explanations)
"Philosophy about how to do research: Make 1% progress per day, for 100 days. Then you will solve your problem." -- Ryan O'Donnell (found on Ryan O'Donnell's lecture video)
"I don't have any magical ability. ... When I was a kid, I had a romanticized notion of mathematics, that hard problems were solved in 'Eureka' moments of inspiration. [But] with me, it's always, ' Let's try this. That gets me part of the way, or that doesn't work. Now let's try this. Oh, there's a little shortcut here.' You work on it long enough and you happen to make progress towards a hard problem by a back door at some point. At the end, it's usally, 'Oh, I've solved the problem.'" -- Terence Tao (found on Ryan O'Donnell's lecture video)
"Don't ever underestimate the heart of a champion." -- Rudy Tomjanovich
"The two most important days of your life is when you were born and when you discovered the reason why you were born. I think we were born to be champions." -- Tyronn Lue
"Good decisions come from experience, but experience comes from making bad decisions." -- Mark Twain
"When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them." -- Pauli Murray
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me." -- Martin Niemöller
"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." -- C.S. Lewis
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
"When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade." -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you." -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg (found on Anna R. Karlin's homepage)
"I have spent my whole life scared - frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen. Fifty years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at three in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine. What I came to realize is that fear, that's the worst of it. That's the real enemy. So, get up, get out in the real world and you kick that bastard as hard as you can right in the teeth." -- Walter White ("Breaking Bad" Season 2 Episode 8 "Better Call Saul")
"I used to be a beat cop, long time ago. And I'd get called out on domestic disputes all the time, hundreds probably over the years. But there was this one guy, this one piece of shit, that I will never forget: Gordy. [...]
Big Boy; 270, 280. But his wife, or whatever she was, his lady, was real small. Like a bird, wrists like little branches. Anyway, my partner and I get called out there every weekend and one of us would pull here aside and say, "C'mon, tonight's the night we press charges." And this wasn't one of those 'deep down he really loves me' setups, we got a lot of those, but not this. This girl was scared. She wasn't gonna cross him no way, no how. Nothing we could do but pass her off to the EMTs, put him in the car, drive him downtown, throw him in the drunk tank. He sleeps it off, next morning out he goes, back home. But one night, my partner's out sick and it's just me. And the call comes in and it's the usual crap. Broke her nose in the shower kind of thing. So I cuff him, put him in the car and away we go. Only that night, we're driving into town, and this sideways asshole is in my backseat humming 'Danny Boy'. And it just rubbed me wrong. So instead of left, I go right, out into nowhere. And I kneel him down and I put my revolver in his mouth and I told him, "This is it. This is how it ends." And he's crying, going to the bathroom all over himself, swearing to God he's gonna leave her alone, screaming - much as you can with a gun in your mouth. And I told him to be quiet, that I needed to think about what I was gonna do here. And of course he got quiet. Goes still, and real quiet, like a dog waiting for dinner scraps. And we just stood there for a while: me acting like I'm thinking things over, and Prince Charming kneeling in the dirt with shit in his pants. After a few minutes I took the gun out of his mouth and I say: "So help me if you ever touch her again I will such and such and such and blah blah blah blah blah. [...]
But two weaks later he killed her. Of course. Caved her head in with the base of a Waring blender. We got there, there was so much blood you could taste the metal. The moral of the story is, I chose a half measure when I should have gone all the way. I'll never make that mistake again. No more half measures, Walter." -- Mike Ehrmantraut ("Breaking Bad" Season 3 Episode 12 "Half Measures")
"I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." -- Michael Jordan
"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity ... An idiot, the more complicated something is, the more he will admire it. If you make something so clusterfucked he can't understand it, he's gonna think you're a god... That's how they write academic journals. They try to make it so complicated people think they're a genius." -- Terry A. Davis (found on YouTube)
"In academia, if it's good you publish it. In industry, if it's good you keep it secret" -- Terry A. Davis
"在你坚持的路上，总会有人问你坚持的意义？努力的意义？那么拼干什么？ 并从他们自己的角度把一些消极的字眼扣在坚持、努力之上，试图把你拉到她们一样的水平。 他们觉得你跟他们一样普普通通就好，并说你在满足虚荣心、你练的很难看、 你没有天赋、你减不下去、你增不了肌、你在浪费时间、你在做表面功夫、这有什么用、没什么意义…… 如果当年马云也被这样的问题被问住了，那他肯定达不到今天的高度。 我觉得“变得不再平庸”就足够怼得她无话可说了。希望题主继续坚持下去。" -- 王大贵 (found in 健身除了好看，还有满足虚荣心还有什么用？ — 王大贵 的回答 - 知乎)
"Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer." -- Filipe Fortes
"If something is important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure." -- Elon Musk (found in Reddit)
"Talent is God-given: be humble; Fame is man-given: be thankful; Conceit is self-given: be careful" -- John Wooden (found in Rob Tibshirani's homepage)
"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." -- Albert Einstein
"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else." -- Leonardo da Vinci
"Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion." --Simon Sinek (found here)
"The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great at whatever they want to do." -- Kobe Bryant
"Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer." -- Filipe Fortes
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." -- (Timothy 4:7 NIV)
“你要逃避少年人的私欲，同那清心祷告主的人追求公义，信德，仁爱，和平。” --（提摩太后书 2：22）
“你该知道，末世必有危险的日子来到。因为那时人要专顾自己、贪爱钱财、自夸、狂傲、谤讟、违背父母、忘恩负义、心不圣洁、无亲情、不解怨、好说谗言、不能自约、性情凶暴、不爱良善、卖主卖友、任意妄为、自高自大、爱宴乐、不爱神，有敬虔的外貌，却背了敬虔的实意；这等人你要躲开。” --（提摩太后书 3：1-5）
"To the Jews wo had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." -- (John 8:31-35)
"爱是恒久忍耐，又有恩慈；爱是不嫉妒；爱是不自夸，不张狂，不做害羞的事，不求自己的益处，不轻易发怒，不计算人的恶，不喜欢不义，只喜欢真理；凡事包容，凡事相信，凡事盼望，凡事忍耐。” -- (哥林多前书 5：13)
"弟兄们，我不是以为自己已经得着了；我只有一件事，就是忘记背后，努力面前的，向着标竿直跑，要得神在基督耶稣里从上面召我来得的奖赏。所以我们中间，凡是完全人总要存这样的心；若在什么事上存别样的心，神也必以此指示你们。” --（腓立比书 3：13-15）
"耶稣又对众人说：“我是世界的光。跟从我的，就不在黑暗里走，必要得着生命的光。” --（约翰福音 8：12）
"What experience and history teach is this -- that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it." -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"If you're good at something, you always have freedom." -- Chris Rossbach
“我武维扬，侵于之疆，取彼凶残。我伐用张，于汤有光” -- 尚书·周书·泰誓 (出处)
“立天之道，曰陰與陽；立地之道，曰柔與剛；立人之道，曰仁與義” -- 申鉴 (出处)
"... the system was able to, and did, maintain itself. This fact is more important than it might seem. If designers of a system are forced to use that system, they quickly become aware of its functional and superficial deficiencies and are strongly motivated to correct them before it is too late." -- Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson "The UNIX Time-Sharing System"
"In most projects, the first system built is barely usable ... Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow." -- Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
"The time is always right to do what is right." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“由是則生而有不用也，由是則可以辟患而有不為也，是故所欲有甚於生者，所惡有甚於死者。非獨賢者有是心也，人皆有之，賢者能勿喪耳。” -- 魚我所欲也 （孟子） (全文)
"IN THE END… We only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make." -- Lewis Carroll
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" -- Wayne Gretzky
"On the subject of not having a good/challenging job: Hogwash. Either get a better job, or here's an idea: Make your current job into something it's not, at least right now. One of the best programmers I knew walked into a job as a maintenance programmer on a legacy system that consisted of dozens of programs and hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Most of which had been hacked on over the years so much that you would have to say there wasn't any coherent design to it anymore. This was pretty much a go-nowhere, dead-end job. Management wanted you to keep your head down, and just fix the damn bugs. The good developers were working on the greenfield project. People either came here to sit out their remaining days until they retired, or gain a few years of experience before going on to new application development. Whereas most programmers would complain about the lack of career development, or the opportunity to learn new things, or not having exciting projects to work on, or more generally just bitching about no one enabling them, this guy simply sat down, and went about doing the work that needed to be done. And over the course of 2 years, he had transformed that system from a buggy hell of spaghetti code to something that was a thing of beauty and functioned like a swiss watch. So complete was the transformation, that the VP of the division started paying more & more attention to the existing project, and started questioning the value of the greenfield project. Although he didn't have a title, the operations people went to him as the de-facto leader of the group. When I left, the VP was talking about creating a new role for him as a systems architect... I'm not sure what happened to him after that, but he taught me a couple of very important lessons: 1. Your job is what you make it, and there's interesting problems to be solved everywhere. If you hate writing CRUD screens, solve the problem by automatically generating them. 2. Don't sit around waiting for opportunities to come to you. Chances are they never will." -- red-dirt (found on StackExchange: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?)
"Success doesn't happen overnight. Keep your eye on the prize and don't look back." -- Erin Andrews
“海阔天空 在勇敢以后 要拿执着 将命运的锁打破 冷漠的人 谢谢你们曾经看轻我 让我不低头 更精彩的活。” -- 海阔天空 （信乐团）
"其实你们看了这个视频水友们 教给你们一个道理 在这个圈子里面 你们可以看到 我是无数次的跌落至谷底。 我跟你们说下我的状况 我的状况就是我爸不在了 我家里根本就没有任何的后援 你们懂吗？ 我给你们教一个人生的道理 当时我家里没有任何的后援 我家里没有任何人能给我提供任何的资源 我想活着 我想有收入 我只能打职业。 但是我在职业经常就遭遇毁灭性的打击-被离队。因为我经常收到各种微信 跟我说他有多惨 龙神你能帮帮我吗？ 你们知道当时我有多惨吗？ 我家里没有一个人能给我一分钱 我只能靠打职业来养活自己 我养不活自己我每天就只能吃饭 连收入都没有 我家里是个后妈 她能管我管道哪去。你要想在dota圈这个地方被离队 没有下家没有别的队伍要你 你不去 一个新的队伍打成绩 打出成绩 你在一个什么二线队养老 根本就活不下去好吗？ 你们可以看到我跌倒了多少次。 你们不要老哭我被踢 但是你们看一下我 跌倒了多少次 为了人生 我是有做了多大的努力。所以我觉得你们有些水友 天天抱怨自己怎么怎么惨 你拿着这个抱怨的气 你去好好工作好好读书也好 好好学也好 比你在这抱怨有用多了。 其实想想人生就是这样 我觉得很多水友也是有学生 应该也有收入不高 比较基层的水友 大家都是穷怕了的。 像我做主播以前 真的就是穷怕了 生活过的可能比你们都苦 比你们都惨。但是我这么多年 我也是坚持下来了呀 努力呀 所以我还是希望 能激励你们一下 对人生不要放弃。做事情不要不用心 混日子 千万不要混日子 千万不要混吃等死。 对自己的工作你再想玩 再想干什么该做的工作都要做好 希望你们能听我一言 这样的话你们可以说 以后在不同的领域 也会有更好的机遇起飞一下的。 你都要做好准备 虽然说不一定来 但是你做好准备了 你就能抓住 你不做好准备 机会来了 也会离开你。 我就是书读的少呀 文化也不高呀 素质也就这样呀 人嘛也是矮矮的 也不是很帅 坚持呀 运气总会来的。” -- 黄翔 LongDD (出自 【刀圈故事会】第10期特别篇)
"Now I've actually always found something that to be very true which is most people don't get those experiences because they'd never asked. I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. I always call him up I called up this will date me but I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old and he lived in Palo Alto. His number was still in a phonebook and he answered the phone himself you know. "yes?" "hi I'm Steve Jobs I'm 12 years old I'm a student in high school and I want to build a frequency counter and I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have?" and he laughed and he gave me the spare parts to build his frequency counter and he gave me a job that summer in Hewlett Packard working on the assembly line putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a job in the place that built him and I was in heaven and I've never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I call. I just asked and when people ask me I try to be as responsive to pay that that debt of gratitude back. Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask and that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You got it. You got to act and you've got to be willing to fail. You've got to be willing to crash and burn, you know, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you're afraid of failing, you won't get very far." -- Steve Jobs (found on YouTube through this post)
"腾讯副总裁吴军博士说“成功的道路并不像想象得那么拥挤，因为在人生的马拉松长路上，绝大部分人跑不到一半就主动退下来了。 到后来，剩下的少数人不是嫌竞争对手太多，而是发愁怎样找一个同伴陪自己一同跑下去。 因此，教育是一辈子的事情，笑到最后的人是一辈子接受教育的人。回过头来看，一些过去比我们读书更优秀， 在起跑线上抢到了更好位置的人，早已放弃了人生的马拉松，我们能够跑得更远，仅仅是因为我们还在跑，如此而已。”急功近利不好，悲观绝望也不好。” -- 子修 （出自 知乎)
"据我观察，大多数人会在本科毕业的时候就选择了不努力，少数人在坚持硕士或者博士毕业后开始不努力，更少数人能熬到走到社会上之后第一次成功， 然后在第一次失败的打击之下选择了不努力。极少数在不断失败之后还能起来的人，几乎都成为了我们所熟知的名人。 不瞒你说，我认识的长辈里有不少是90年代天之骄子，一时全城名声大噪风光无两，然而现在。。。选择放弃才是常态，不放弃是极少数。” -- 快乐一剑飘 (出自 知乎)
"世上有这种人的：尽管有卓越的天赋才华，却承受不住系统训练，而终归将才华支离破碎地挥霍掉“ -- 《挪威的森林》
"今天再大的事 明天都是小事; 会识人而不评人; 人生在世不如意事十之八九; 快乐唯一的源泉是自己; 脾气越大 本事越小; 贵的东西心疼一瞬间 享受以后用它的时间" -- Vickey (出自Vickey 30岁教会我的30件事情 | 超长心灵鸡汤)
"任何人，无论你昨天多风光，无论你昨天多失意，明天天亮的时候，你一样要起身做回个人，继续生活下去，因为明天总比昨天好，这就是人生" -- 楚原 (出自楚原第37届香港金像奖获奖感言)
"黎明前的黑暗，是最深不见底的黑暗，但是咬紧牙关，熬过去的人，就能看到天亮了" -- Unknown
"Worry is a misuse of the imagination." -- Dan Zadra
"If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist." -- Unknown (found in Brené Brown's TED talk "The power of vulnerability")
"The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both." -- Zen Philosophy
"Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it." -- Unknown
"in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is." -- Unknown
"只有你自己能帮得了自己，没有人能够帮得了你“ -- 江疏影
"It is important for you to realize what grades in this class reflect and what they don't reflect. All we can grade you on is how well you demonstrate that you know the material this semester. We can't grade you on how much of a success you'll be after graduation, how smart/creative/persistent/self-motivated you are, or even how well you'll be able to apply the material in the future. And after all, it is what you do in the future, not what you do this semester, that's really important." -- Prof. Lorenzo Alvisi (found in his "Distributed Computing Principles" class grading policy)
"Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others." -- Romain Rolland
"From [Grothendieck], I have also learned not to take glory in the difficulty of a proof: difficulty means we have not understood. The idea is to be able to paint a landscape in which the proof is obvious." -- Pierre Deligne
"To ask the right question is harder than to answer it." -- Georg Cantor
"The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers." -- Richard Hamming
"The art of doing mathematics is finding that special case that contains all the germs of generality." -- David Hibert
"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried." -- Stephen McCranie
"Don't think. Feel" -- Bruce Lee
"I know I have chosen the hard path, because I know that is the right thing to do." -- Unknown
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." -- Richard Feynman
"If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem." -- Eldridge Cleaver
"I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself." -- Robert E. Lee
"My sword I leave to him who can wear it." -- The Pilgrim's Progress (found in Charlie Munger's USC law commencement speech)
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people do that, but the really great make you feel that you too, can be great." -- Mark Twain
"Your code is like your boyfriend or girlfriend. It's okay to talk about it on an abstract, high level. But you don't want to go into the specific details, and you certainly don't want to share." -- Pascal Van Hentenryck
"It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer." --Albert Einstein
"Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful." --John C. Maxwell
"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." --Jim Rohn
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” -- Mahatma Gandhi
"Don't be afraid to fail, be afraid not to try." -- Unknown
"The most dangerous person is one who listens, thinks and observes." -- Bruce Lee
"宝剑锋从磨砺出，梅花香自苦寒来" -- 选自 <警世贤文·勤奋篇>
"There are two kinds of gifts. First, there is the innate gift of a given skill. This is a minor gift. If you have this gift, a skill such as doing math or playing the piano comes naturally to you. There are millions of people with minor gifts of all kinds who never do anything great with their gifted skills, because they lack the major gift.
The major gift is the love of the work. This might seem backward. How can love of using a skill be more important than the skill itself? It is for this simple reason: if you have a major gift, you will do things with the skills you have. And keep doing them. And your love of the work will shine through. And through practice, your skills will grow and become more powerful, until your skills are as great or greater than someone who only has the minor gift.
There is only one way to find out if you have the major gift. Start down the path, and see if it makes your heart sing." -- "The Art of Game Design"
"Don't complain - Expect nothing - Do something" -- New York Giants football motto
"Maturation as a scientist involves many components, but a key one for me was the development of taste, much as it is in the enjoyment of art, music, food, or wine. One needs to learn what problems are important. I sensed myself developing taste, distinguishing what was interesting from what was not - and among the things that were interesting, I also learned what was doable." -- Eric Kandel
"Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them." -- Lee Smolin
"You should spend at least as much time in the presentation of the work as you do in the work itself." -- Hamming (You and Your Research)
"Though this be madness yet there is method in it." -- Shakespeare (Hamlet)
"Ever try? Ever fail? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett
"To teach is to learn twice." -- Joseph Jouberts
"If you're smart, what you do is make connections. To make connections, you have to have inputs. Thus, try to avoid having the same exact inputs as everyone else. Gain new experiences and thus bring together things no one has brought together before." -- Steve Jobs
"Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien
"It's hard to make something that's interesting... Basically, anything that anyone makes... It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. It's all tending toward mediocrity the way that all the atoms are dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything that is more than mediocre is an extreme act of will. You just have to exert so much will into something for it to be good." -- Ira Glass (This American Life) (found in Graduate School: Keys To Success)
"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting." -- Bruce Wayne (Batman Begins)
"I came, I saw, I conquered." -- Julius Caesar
"The best way [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written." -- Bill Gates
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." -- C. G. JUNG
"Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself." -- Publilius Syrus
"Not every legend is a myth, some are flesh and blood. Some legends walk among us, but they aren’t born, they’re built. Legends are made from iron & sweat, mind and muscle, blood and vision and victory. Legends are champions, they grow, they win, they conquer. There’s a legend behind every legacy, there’s a blueprint behind every legend." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger
"Look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master." -- Eric S. Raymond
"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. Code for readability." -- John Woods
"Every piece of computer software, no matter how small, involves at least a team of two -- me, and me six months from now when I have to fix it." -- Tony Williams from Slashdot.com
"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings." -- Salvador Dali
"A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group." -- Russell H Ewing
"I've always lived cheaply. I live like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do. I can do what I think is important for me to do. It freed me to do what seemed worth doing. So make a real effort to avoid getting sucked into all the expensive lifestyle habits of typical Americans. Because if you do that, then people with the money will dictate what you do with your life. You won't be able to do what's really important to you." -- Richard Stallman
"Effective interview process: interviewing is a two-way process. During the interview, the interviewee is evaluating the company by the interviewing question quality. I'd suggest this is one of the most efficient ways to understand your potential coworkers." -- ACRush (Tiancheng Lou) on joining Quora
"No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go." -- Henry Rollins
"If you want to become a good programmer, you can spend 10 years programming, or spend 2 years programming and learning algorithms." -- Erik Demaine
"To use an analogy, if algorithms were about automobiles, it would be for the person who wants to know how cars work, how they are built, and how one might design fuel-efficient, safe, reliable vehicles for the 21st century. The people who hate algorithms are the ones who just want to know how to drive their car on the highway, just like everyone else." -- Peter Norvig
"I think the value of getting a great education - that is going to college - is easy to underestimate. The most interesting jobs require a college education. The STEM related jobs are probably the most interesting although they are not for everyone. The value of staying curious - reading a lot and learning new things even after college is also underestimated." -- Bill Gates (found in reddit AMA)
"Curly braces lead to anger. Anger leads to fear. Fear leads to suffering." -- Kensanata on #emacs
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." -- Albert Einstein
"Talk is cheap. Show me the code." -- Linus Torvalds
"If you would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not let yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads." -- Nietzsche
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expression." Now they have two problems." -- Jamie Zawinski (found in comp.emacs.xemacs)
"Another strategy is to ignore the fact that you are slowly killing yourself by not sleeping and exercising enough. That frees up several hours a day. The only downside is that you get fat and die." -- Scott Adams
"Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment. If things aren't going well it probably means you are learning a lot and things will go better later." -- Randy Pausch
"Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." -- Captain John Parker