…the professional often commits the error of deriding the work of the amateur for not being sufficiently professional; and this error is much less excusable than that made by the amateur in underestimating the distance between himself and the professional.

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming

The only serious attempt to manage the world differently – Communism – was so much worse in almost every conceivable way that nobody has the stomach to try again.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

You know you’re not the only one who has to accept things you don’t necessarily like, right? It’s part of the human condition.

— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way

Will is our internal power, which can never be affected by the outside world.

— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way

A surprising number of 20th-century intellectuals and artists have gushed over totalitarian dictators, a syndrome that the intellectual historian Mark Lilla calls tyrannophilia.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now