Philosophy always comes on the scene too late to give instruction as to what the world ought to be. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there, cut and dried, after its process of formation has been completed… When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then a shape of life has grown old. It cannot be rejuvenated by philosophy’s grey on grey; it can only be understood. It is only with the fall of dusk that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings.

— Georg W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right

A ‘human being’ on this view is not a unity, not autonomous, but a process, [is] perpetually in construction, perpetually contradictory, perpetually open to change.

— Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice

Testosterone makes us more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status. And the key point is what it takes. Engineer social circumstances right, and boosting testosterone levels during a challenge would make people compete like crazy to do the most acts of random kindness. In our world riddled with male violence, the problem isn’t that testosterone can increase levels of aggression. The problem is the frequency with which we reward aggression.

— Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave

It is more important to reduce the effort of maintenance than it is to reduce the effort of implementation.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Code Simplicity

Programmers may spend a long day up to their elbows in source code, but at some point they get to go home and forget about it. System administrators never quite leave the job behind…

— Hackers & Painters, Paul Graham