The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.

System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Dissertations are not finished; they are abandoned.

The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.