Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

Anyone may be a hero: their response, not the circumstances themselves, determines it.

— Stephen Anderson, Hap & Happiness

Universities and research labs force hackers to be scientists, and companies force them to be engineers.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

…postmodern Theory seeks not to be factually true but to be strategically useful: in order to bring about its own aims, morally virtuous and politically useful by its own definitions.

— Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay, Cynical Theories

Have you noticed how some project teams are efficient, with everyone knowing what to do and contributing fully, while the members of other teams are constantly bickering and don’t seem able to get out of each other’s way? Often this is an orthogonality issue. When teams are organized with lots of overlap, members are confused about responsibilities. Every change needs a meeting of the entire team, because any one of them might be affected.

— Andrew Hunt and David Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer