I’ve always seen much more in common with writing prose than math. It feels like you’re writing a story and you’re trying to express a concept to a very dumb person—the computer—who has a limited vocabulary. You’ve got this concept you want to express and limited tools to express it with. What words do you use and what does your introductory and summary statement look like? That sort of thing.

— Peter Seibel, Coders at Work

You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From the Underground

Any professional negotiator knows that to control the terms of a debate is very nearly to control the outcome of the debate.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind (Rationality

I firmly believe that the important things about humans are social in character and that relief by machines from many of our present demanding intellectual functions will finally give the human race time and incentive to learn how to live well together.

— Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By

It is as dangerous as it is absurd to pretend that we cannot make any judgments about the practices of a culture other than our own.

— Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay, Cynical Theories