“Yes” is easy. It gives you a quick fix of approval instead of the slow burn of effectiveness.

— Brennen Reece, Productivity for the Depressive Polymath

The world is a system and a network: to conceive of men as ‘free’ is to think of them as capable of having, at some past juncture, acted in some fashion other than that in which they did act; it is to think of what consequences would have come of such unfulfilled possibilities, and in what respects the world would have been different, as a result, from the world as it now is.

— Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy, and Michael Ignatieff, The Hedgehog and the Fox

William Duggan’s research in Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement asserts that when you completely let go, of even trying to solve the problem, the brain recategorizes and re-sorts all apparently unrelated information into new innovative solutions.

— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

…usually, when things suck, it’s because they suck in a way that’s a Nash equilibrium.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Inadequate Equilibria

…simple design is an imprecise discipline. It relies on judgment and experience. Done well, it is the first indication that separates an apprentice who knows the rules from a journeyman who understands the principles.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Craftsmanship