Don’t be a slave to history. Don’t let existing code dictate future code. All code can be replaced if it is no longer appropriate. Even within one program, don’t let what you’ve already done constrain what you do next – be ready to refactor… This decision may impact the project schedule. The assumption is that the impact will be less than the cost of /not/ making the change.

— Andrew Hunt and David Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer

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