Some excerpts i particularly like from Alan J. Perlis Programming Epigraphs, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html

• You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
• Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
• Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
• Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
• Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
• Optimization hinders evolution.
• In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".
• Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
• Computers don't introduce order anywhere as much as they expose opportunities.
• Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description for time.
• Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process.
• One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
• Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
• Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught not to. So it is with great programmers.
• Wherever there is modularity there is the potential for misunderstanding: Hiding information implies a need to check communication.
• In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. [hence, "bravo, simplicity", right?]
• Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
• A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
• Wherever there is modularity there is the potential for misunderstanding: Hiding information implies a need to check communication.
• Every program is a part of some other program and rarely fits.
• Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
• When we write programs that "learn", it turns out that we do and they don't.
• Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.
• [repeat for emphasis] Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.