Few of us want to be reminded that there is a hunk of dead animal on our plate when we are served a steak. Mostly, we protect ourselves by a coy use of language and an elaborate set of conventions that allow us to maintain a double standard. The true nature of meat eating, like the true nature of sex and excretion, is only easy to refer to implicitly, hidden in euphemistic synonyms and allusions: “veal cutlets,” “making love,” “going to the bathroom.” Somehow we sense that there is soul-killing going on in slaughterhouses, but our palates don’t want to be reminded of it.

— Douglas R Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I

True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

— Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

When Fred Brooks wrote that there were no order-of-magnitude gains, he missed something. There may not be any 10x gains, but there are certainly 10x losses.

— David Farley, Modern Software Engineering

The main role of logic in reasoning, we suggest, may well be a rhetorical one: logic helps simplify and schematize intuitive arguments, highlighting and often exaggerating their force.

— Hugo Mercier, The Enigma of Reason

…people’s perception of risk is not static, and it’s often not connected to the probability of failure so much as it is the potential feeling of rejection and condemnation from their peers.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire