All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies and lies…

— Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

St. Augustine’s “love God and do as you will” can be easily translated, “Be healthy and then you may trust your impulses.”

— Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality

I believe “a science of design” to be an impossible and indeed misleading goal.

— Frederick P. Jr. Brooks, The Design of Design

To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day toward self-actualization. Self-actualization is an ongoing process; it means making each of the many single choices about whether to lie or be honest, whether to steal or not steal at a particular point, and it means to make each of these choices as a growth choice. This is movement toward self-actualization.

— Abraham Maslow, Farther Reaches of Human Nature

…today’s educated workforce is full of philosophy or Renaissance literature majors who believe they are cut out for better things. They consider being a mere cog in administrative machinery beneath their dignity.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs