In examining the tasks of software development versus software maintenance, most of the tasks are the same—except for the additional maintenance task of “understanding the existing product.” This task consumes roughly 30 percent of the total maintenance time and is the dominant maintenance activity. Thus it is possible to claim that maintenance is a more difficult task than development.

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

Mathematics and logic were celebrated as the feature that distinguished humans from beasts—and now machines could do both.

— Peter J. Denning and Matti Tedre, Computational Thinking

Diversification doesn’t work as a strategy for the poor.

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

You can’t automate excellence, though we will likely keep trying. It’s futile. Why? Because people are actually worth something.

— Dan Charnas, Everything in Its Place

…the 1966 Rosenthal-Jacobson study, in which students were given a fake aptitude test and their teachers were told which students were expected to “bloom” (when in reality the so-called good students were randomly selected). Over the next year, those students did better than their classmates.

— Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing