Destroying the passions and desires merely in order to avoid their stupidity and the disagreeable consequences of their stupidity seems to us nowadays to be itself simply an acute form of stupidity.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

The true humility required of a developer is the willingness to remove their identity from the user’s world.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Understanding Software

I’d been groomed by society to see math as a way of drawing a circle and putting myself in it, believing that math was a showcase for flaunting talent rather than a playground for building virtue.

— Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

…professional means unsurprising. You will be considered professional to the extent you look, act, and think like everyone else, a perfect drone.

— Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, Peopleware

Inventors and geniuses, at the beginning of their careers (and very often at the end as well), have almost always been regarded in society as no more than fools—that is a most routine observation, well known to everyone.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot