CoW relies on:
...and lots of other free and open source projects.
Some quotations:
A building is not something you finish, but something you start. (Stewart Brand; we can say the same about successful software)
There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. (C.A.R. Hoare)
A computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to p erform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. (The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, H. Abelson, G. Sussman and J. Sussman, 1985.)
If you try to make something beautiful, it is often ugly. If you try to make something useful, it is often beautiful. (Oscar Wilde)
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science. (Kelvin)
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. (Einstein)
A human being is a part of this whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to apportion for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. (Einstein.)
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. (Douglas Adams.)
Reasonable people expect to change in order to adapt to the changing world; only unreasonable people expect the world to change in order to accomodate them. Therefore all progress is made by unreasonable people. (Nick Ostler in a talk on minority languages, 2002.)
...the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are the most social. In human terms, most ethical... There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness. (Ursula le Guin)