The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.

— Edsger W.Dijkstra, How Do We Tell Truths That Might Hurt?

Not everyone recognizes that addiction can appear in larger systems and in other guises—such as the dependence of industry on government subsidy, the reliance of farmers on fertilizers, the addiction of Western economies to cheap oil or weapons manufacturers to government contracts.

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

…we have science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.

— Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

At a well-run and successful company, most of your previous technical decisions won’t meet your current quality threshold.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

Applications create possibilities for millions of credulous users, whereas OSes impose limitations on thousands of grumpy coders, and so OS-makers will forever be on the shit-list of anyone who counts for anything in the high-tech world.

— Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning…Was the Command Line