Describing how a process works is valuable for two reasons. It forces you to make sure you know how it works. Then it forces you to take the reader through the same sequence of ideas and deductions that made the process clear to you.

— William Zinsser, On Writing Well

…there is a sense that the pleasurable aspects of one’s calling, such as thinking, were not really what one is being paid for; they were better seen as occasional indulgences one is granted in recognition of one’s real work, which is largely about filling out forms.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

I believe that standard corporate product design processes do indeed work against truly great and innovative design.

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

…the construction of software is a complex, deeply intellectual task, one that shows little possibility of being made simple. Automation is the ultimate trivialization of this nontrivial activity, and those who claim that it has been achieved are doing serious harm to the software field in its quest for better realistic tools and techniques.

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

Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov