This was, without a doubt, a general disease. I could find no better word for it: To ignore the natural wisdom of one’s body, to shun all the signals it constantly sends you about what to pursue and what to avoid, and to trust instead in the things told to you by your superiors, to base your life choices on their words and not on your own inner compass, was a disease. It was a disease because those who did this could not help but be confused, conflicted, and miserable.

— Roman Gelperin, The Master Mind of the Self-Actualizing Person

The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when they spake of great men- and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

in some of the more lawless parts of the former Soviet Union, gangs prey so systematically on travelers on trains and buses that they have developed the habit of giving each victim a little token to confirm that the bearer has already been robbed. Obviously, one step toward the creation of a state.

— David Graeber, Debt

The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things.

— Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Deep down, many engineers secretly wish to be seen as geniuses.

— Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google