Our civilisation is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler.

— George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

…problem solving style was unique to the individual. Thus, anything that forces a programmer to think in another person’s style reduces that programmer’s ability to solve problems.

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming

If you want to think about evil, real evil, a better way to proceed is this: Don’t think about what other people have done to you; think instead about your own actions that hurt others, that made others want you to apologize and make amends.

— Paul Bloom, Against Empathy

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.

— Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence

When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.

— James Clear, Atomic Habits