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The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

— Fred Brooks The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975)

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Patience

More quotes by Fred Brooks

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

An ancient adage warns, "Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three."

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975)

Job Control Language is the worst programming language ever designed anywhere by anybody for any purpose.

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious.

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975)

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Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

Benjamin Disraeli Contarini Fleming (1832)

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1865)

The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.

Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1865)

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

Plutarch

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Fred Brooks (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.