If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

— David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

The post-modern condition of plural and provisional perspectives, lacking any rational or transcendental ground or unifying world-view, is our own, given to us as an historical fate, and it is idle to pretend otherwise.

— John Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake

Yet the program construct, unlike the poet’s words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

— Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month

Money and culture! In a country like England you can no more be cultured without money than you can join the Cavalry Club.

— George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Confidence comes before success. Success rarely creates confidence.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire