It is too easy to get lost in the detail of ephemera. Which language, operating system, text editor, or framework we choose is detail that, ultimately, should matter less to us than those skills that are transferable across all of these things.

— David Farley, Modern Software Engineering

…writing is not a special language owned by the English teacher. Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all.

— William Zinsser, On Writing Well

People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn’t fit with what they already know.

— Jessica Livingston, Founders at Work

Bureaucracies fall in love with the details and entirely miss the destination. They pour all their efforts into making comprehensive, multiyear plans in lieu of starting to make any actual changes and improvements, or asking how the world will be any different after its plan is complete.

— Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai, Hack Your Bureaucracy

Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov