Freebsd Fortunes 4

It has long been an axiom of mine that the
little things are infinitely the most important.
                -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"

It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the
manes of horses.  The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle
baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest
is nest, and never the mane shall tweet.

It has long been known that one horse can run faster
than another -- but which one?  Differences are crucial.
                -- Lazarus Long

It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of
indulgence for infanticide.  A question of interest, my dear Sir!  The jury
is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim
of infanticide.
                -- Edmond About

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens,
to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
                -- Marcus Porcius Cato

It is a lesson which all history teaches
wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
                -- Emerson

It is a poor judge who cannot award a prize.

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
                -- Aeschylus

It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was
my age, he had been dead for 2 years.
                -- Tom Lehrer

It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but
it is also very memorable.  I vividly recall the night we decided how to
organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360.  The
manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and
I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
        The architecture manager had 10 good men.  He asserted that they
could write the specifications and do it right.  It would take ten months,
three more than the schedule allowed.
        The control program manager had 150 men.  He asserted that they
could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating;
it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule.
Furthermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling
their thumbs for ten months.
        To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control
program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time,
but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality.  I did, and
it was.  He was right on both counts.  Moreover, the lack of conceptual
integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would
estimate that it added a year to debugging time.
                -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"