Why is it so important—what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right—so long as it’s not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic—and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand.

— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Artists and philosophers not only show us what we have felt, they present our experiences more poignantly and intelligently than we have been able; they give shape to aspects of our lives that we recognize as our own, yet could never have understood so clearly on our own. They explain our condition to us, and thereby help us to be less lonely with, and confused by it.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

There was about eighteen months where ENIAC was consistently three months from being finished,

— Ananyo Bhattacharya, The Man From the Future

The primary obstacle to success is an unwillingness to define a small, clear set of goals and commit to them for an entire project.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

…there is a whiff of sadism in programming, a heroic self-immolation on the pyre of complexity.

— Kent Beck, Tidy First?