Over the first half of the 20th century, the tax grew from “unconstitutional proposal” to “tentative experiment” to “wartime necessity” to “the government’s primary funding mechanism.”

— Ben Orlin, Math With Bad Drawings

Because pure mathematics has no inherent correspondence with the outside world, we are free to make it correspond, to interpret it, in any way we choose. And it so happens—this is the interesting part—that most branches of pure mathematics can be interpreted in such a way that the axioms and theorems become approximately true statements about the external world.

— Richard J. Trudeau, Introduction to Graph Theory

Scrum, for example, was never meant to stand in place of design. No matter how many project and product managers would like to keep you marching on a relentless path of continuous delivery, Scrum was not meant only as a means to keep Gantt chart enthusiasts happy. Yet, it has become that in so many cases.

— Vaughn Vernon, Implementing Domain-Driven Design

Why can’t most of our projects be fun? I think the main reason is that we don’t expect them to be.

— Robert L. Glass and Tom DeMarco, Software Creativity 2.0

Science and social justice require each other to be healthy, and both are critically important to human freedom. Without a just system, you cannot be free to do science, including science designed to better understand human identity; without science, and especially scientific understandings of human behaviors, you cannot know how to create a sustainably just system. As a consequence of this trip, I have come to understand that the pursuit of evidence is probably the most pressing moral imperative of our time.

— Alice Dreger, Galileo’s Middle Finger