…the construction of software is a complex, deeply intellectual task, one that shows little possibility of being made simple. Automation is the ultimate trivialization of this nontrivial activity, and those who claim that it has been achieved are doing serious harm to the software field in its quest for better realistic tools and techniques.

— Robert L. Glass, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life. Reason may play the critic, and correct certain errors afterwards; but if we were to wait for its formal and absolute decisions in the shifting and multifarious combinations of human affairs, the world would stand still.

— William Hazlitt , On Prejudice

…enthusiasm without planning can do more harm than good.

— Jonathan A. Levi, The Only Skill That Matters

If the immediate and direct purpose of life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world

— Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World