Abstraction is layering ignorance on top of reality. (http://www.dreamsongs.com/ObjectsHaveFailedNarrative.html) (Richard P. Gabriel)
And as a result we find that object-oriented languages have succumbed to static thinkers who worship perfect planning over runtime adaptability, early decisions over late ones, and the wisdom of compilers over the cleverness of failure detection and repair. (http://dreamsongs.com/ObjectsHaveFailedNarrative.html) (Richard P. Gabriel)
I should not choose long, hard words just to make other persons think that I know a lot. I should try to make my thoughts clear; if they are clear and right, then other persons can judge my work as it ought to be judged. (http://www.brics.dk/~hosc/local/HOSC-12-3-pp221-236.pdf) (Guy Steele)
I think programmers have become inured to incidental complexity, in particular by confusing familiar or concise with simple. And when they encounter complexity, they consider it a challenge to overcome, rather than an obstacle to remove. Overcoming complexity isn't work, it's waste. (http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/rich-hickey-geek-of-the-week/) (Rich Hickey)
OO makes code understandable by encapsulating moving parts.FP makes code understandable by minimizing moving parts. (http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/11/03/object-oriented-vs-functional-programming/) (Michael Feathers)
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. (Leonardo Da Vinci)
SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing. (http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html) (Philip Greenspun)
The average function does to numbers what Gaussian blur does to pictures. Avoid it if you want to see the edges. (http://isaacdevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/05/graphical-comparison-of-programming.html)
There are two ways to try to make a software system reliable: make it so simple that it obviously has no bugs, or make it so complicated that it has no obvious bugs. (http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-October/345521.html) (Alex Martelli)
Things that are different should look different. (http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html) (Larry Wall)