Aphorism Considered Harmful

I'm amused by the other three example aphorisms in your opening paragraph, because I knew the originators of those three off the top of my head.

In The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks said “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.”

Edsger Dijkstra sent a letter titled “A Case Against the Go To Statement” to the Communications of the ACM. The journal's editor, Niklaus Wirth, changed the title to “Go To Statement Considered Harmful”.

Donald Knuth said “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, but after a qualifier. I didn't remember where he said it though. It was in “Structured Programming with go to Statements”. The qualifier was “We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time”.