"Lector, si monumentum requiris, Circumspice."<p>One I've always loved, inscribed above the crypt containing the grave of Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral. Translated as: "Reader, if you seek his memorial, look around you"<p>Think that would work equally well for Tim O'Reilly, to the point of a nice Latin pun ;)
I have a hazy recollection that classical education used to mean mathematics, Greek and latin. I take that combination to be pretty good prep for hacking haskell, clojure, erlang, F#, whatever.<p>Especially with some logic, stats/probability, applied math, linguistics, and intro classes to assembler and C thrown in.
I guess this explains how he got into publishing books for programmers/developers. . .<p><i>O'Reilly was initially interested. . .but after graduating. . .with a B.A. cum laude in Classics he became involved in the field of computer manuals.</i><p>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Reilly" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Reilly</a>]
"I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally."<p>For an individual who has studied classics, you would expect that he would know that all the ancients, greek and romans, considered virtue as a habit, not Aristotle alone. It was rather a cultural thing which is why the Romans emphasised training their pupils to be good citizens by teachers of great character so that they can imitate their habits.