While some on the far right might want to halt progress or even consider it to have gone too far already, and some on the far left consider progress a myth and insist that life in liberal democracies is still as oppressive as it ever has been (thanks, Foucault), liberalism both appreciates progress and is optimistic that it will continue.

— Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay, Cynical Theories

Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.

— Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die

Product design and release processes cannot turn good designers into great ones. They rarely produce great designs without a great designer. But the disciplines imposed can bring up the low end of the design curve and improve the average performance of the art.

— Frederick P. Jr. Brooks, The Design of Design

your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life …. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

— Samuel H. Barondes, Making Sense of People

Why such a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly valuable oil.

— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick