When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

— T. S. Eliot, The Perfect Critic

If you can’t get teams to adopt proper code linting, your attempts to roll out a comprehensive quality program are doomed.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

What, after all, does daily social life consist in? A disparaging remark about another group; a rumor or story meant to draw outrage; a news story dug up by partisans seeking advantage; a crude expression of allegiance to an institution as flawed as its denigrated rivals. All of these are fundamental to the fabric of social life, especially in times when social life is unusually politicized…

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought

Instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge through the Internet was supposed to educate and inform us, but instead it has created a society-wide poverty of attention.

— Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain

What disturbs and renders unhappy … the age of youth … is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises the constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness of our dreams hover before us in capriciously selected shapes and we search in vain for their original … Much would have been gained if through timely advice and instruction young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy