Simplicity vs Complexity
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
— Brian Wilson Kernighan
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
— Alan Perlis
Entropy
A living organism [...] feeds upon negative entropy... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Dying is very natural, staying alive is the miracle.
— Jamshid Gharajedaghi
Risk
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
— George Bernard Shaw
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
— Lu Xun
Consciousness
Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves. [...] Quantum physics thus [also] reveals a basic oneness of the universe.
— Erwin Schrodinger
The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim.
— Edsger W. Dijkstra