In a broken world, we must also realize that power is often unearned, and it doesn’t just come to those who would use it well.

— Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

Increasingly, people don’t become academics because of intelligence, but rather because of a lower grasp of disorder.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

A database is just a collection of data organized in some way.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

Of the seventy million people who died in major 20th-century famines, 80 percent were victims of Communist regimes’ forced collectivization, punitive confiscation, and totalitarian central planning.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

It’s widely recognized that if you’re not failing now and then, you’re not being innovative enough or taking enough risks.

— Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google