Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.

...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.

It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers

The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.

When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.

Nine people can't make a baby in a month.