Sometimes an approach that requires more lines of code is actually simpler, because it reduces cognitive load.

— John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

They desired nothing and were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to love, while they without science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge.

— Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Hegel believed that he had revealed the rule of Reason in the unfolding of Spirit through world history. But this carries the unfortunate implication that whatever has been successful is thereby also somehow “right” and superior to what has been unsuccessful.

— Lloyd Spencer, Introducing Hegel

A big red flag is raised for me when people talk about the phases of their modernization plans in terms of which technologies they are going to use rather than what value they will add.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

”You kind of get used to it,’” he repeated. “Fifty per cent of the Consolations of Philosophy in seven words. And the other fifty per cent can be expressed in six: Brother, when you’re dead, you’re dead. Or if you prefer, you can make it seven: Brother, when you’re dead, you’re not dead.”

— Aldous Huxley, The Genius and the Goddess