We, programmers, are the ones who speak to the machines and make them work. We are the ones who breathe life into them, and into our economies and societies. Nothing happens in this world without us. We—rule the world! Other people think they rule the world and then they hand those rules to us and we write the rules that execute in the machines that govern everything.

— Robert C. Martin, We, Programmers

If you look at any list of cult characteristics, you’ll see items that could easily describe political parties and corporations—“group members encouraged to distrust outside criticism as having hidden motives,” “hierarchical authoritative structure.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

We always spend more time maintaining and changing software than on initial development.

— Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson, Head First Design Patterns

The level of change in our industry is impressive, but my thesis is that much of this change is not really significant.

— David Farley, Modern Software Engineering

And that’s how it always is with these beautiful, Schilleresque souls till the last moment they dress a man up in peacock’s feathers, till the last moment they hope for the good and not the bad; and though they may have premonitions of the other side of the coin, for the life of them they will not utter a real word beforehand; the thought alone makes them cringe; they wave the truth away with both hands, till the very moment when the man they’ve decked out so finely sticks their noses in it with his own two hands.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment