We can go absolutely nowhere in argument without the laws of logic. However, these laws cannot themselves be proven, for we would have to presuppose them in order to construct an argument for them!

— Noah Harris, Ergoing Nowhere

…there is nothing more vexing, for instance, than to be rich, of respectable family, of decent appearance, of rather good education, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time to have no talent, no particularity, no oddity even, not a single idea of one’s own, to be decidedly “like everybody else.” There is wealth, but not a Rothschild’s; an honorable family, but which has never distinguished itself in any way; a decent appearance, but very little expression; a proper education, but without knowing what to apply it to; there is intelligence, but with no ideas of one’s own; there is a heart, but with no magnanimity, etc., etc., in all respects. There are a great many such people in the world and even far more than it seems; they are divided, as all people are, into two main categories: one limited, the other “much cleverer.” The first are happier. For the limited “usual” man, for instance, there is nothing easier than to imagine himself an unusual and original man and to revel in it without any hesitation.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

You can make the case that all creative endeavors are about pushing against constraints. In the words of physicist Richard Feynman, “Creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.”

— Ben Orlin, Math With Bad Drawings

I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.

— George Orwell,, Down and Out in Paris and London…

…find out what they’re excited about. That’s kind of a basic threshold for me. And it doesn’t matter whether it has anything to do with programming or computers. If they can’t get enthusiastic about something, they’re not going to get charged up in a group.

— Peter Seibel, Coders at Work