The purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise. - Edsger W. Dijkstra

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a quality that decides between success and failure.

Lisp has jokingly been called “the most intelligent way to misuse a computer”. I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

When we had no computers, we had no programming problem either. When we had a few computers, we had a mild programming problem. Confronted with machines a million times as powerful, we are faced with a gigantic programming problem.