Hype is the plague on the house of software. Most software tool and technique improvements account for about a 5 to 35 percent increase in productivity and quality. But at one time or another, most of those same improvements have been claimed by someone to have “order of magnitude” benefits.

— Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, Robert L. Glass

…optimistic scheduling erodes the relationship with the customer because customers lose faith in overly optimistic managers and developers.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry, theory of structures, or thermodynamics, but because they were first pictures—literally visions—in the minds of those who conceived them.

— Eugene Ferguson, Engineering and the Mind’s Eye

users are often unable to articulate exactly what they need, yet they often seem insistent about what they don’t want…once they see it.

— Steve Bell and Mike Orzen, Lean IT

“We need books that work on us like misfortune (Unglück), that hurt us like the death of one who is dearer to us than ourselves, as if we were exiled into the woods far from all humans, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief” (Letter to Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904).

— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis