Bjarne Stroustrup

"A principle is not a rule; it's a guideline for thinking."

"The future is not something you predict; it's something you create."

"The only constant in technology is change."

"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window."

"The most important aspect of software is not the software itself, but the people who use it."

"If you want your code to be fast, you must first make it clear."

"Leadership is not about being in charge; it's about taking care of those in your charge."

"The strength of programming is abstraction; the weakness is that abstraction can hide problems."

"You learn by example more than by precept."

"The purpose of a review is to improve, not to judge."

"Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out."

"The most important principle for the good programmer is to refuse to write code that is difficult to understand."

"I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

"The purpose of software engineering is to control complexity, not to create it."

"A 'good' language is not one in which you can do anything, but one in which you can elegantly express complicated thought."

"Our civilization depends critically on software. We can't afford to get it wrong."

"The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases."

"Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency would have been a perfect description of my approach to C++ design."

"First, I believe that the most important principle is to refuse to do anything stupid."

"Language design is library design and library design is language design."

"We need to teach people that it's perfectly okay to say 'I don't know.'"

"The ability to do something doesn't mean you have the right to do it."

"I find myself thinking that good old IBM machines had a better idea about how to design things."

"To write effective modern C++, you must think in new ways."

"Beauty can be a path to truth."

"I am not comfortable with people using my language to create dangerous systems."

"The most powerful tool we have as programmers is abstraction."

"Good design is not about what goes in, it's about what you leave out."

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those doing it."

"Coding standards matter; sloppy code breeds sloppy thinking."