When predictions of apocalyptic resource shortages repeatedly fail to come true, one has to conclude either that humanity has miraculously escaped from certain death again and again like a Hollywood action hero or that there is a flaw in the thinking that predicts apocalyptic resource shortages.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

…in the textbooks from which each new scientific generation learns to practice its trade. Inevitably, however, the aim of such books is persuasive and pedagogic; a concept of science drawn from them is no more likely to fit the enterprise that produced them than an image of a national culture drawn from a tourist brochure or a language text.

— Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

…forecasting, especially when done with “science,” is often the last refuge of the charlatan, and has been so since the beginning of times.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

…an organization that allows any tool is an organization with uniformly unsupported tooling.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

“Behind every great fortune, there is a crime,” Balzac wrote. Except he didn’t. What he actually said was that a great fortune with no apparent cause was probably due to a crime well enough executed that it had been forgotten.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters