…we did not need books to confirm what we thought we knew about the world; we needed “books that work like an axe” to chop away at the “frozen sea” inside us.

— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

Eduard von Hartmann, combined optimism and pessimism in an unusual way. Humanity has truly advanced, he said. Knowledge has expanded. Everyone will one day gain a complete understanding of the essence of existence. Then they’ll realize its emptiness and commit massive collective suicide.

— Anja Publications, Philosophy Now

It is because of empathy that we often enact savage laws or enter into terrible wars; our feeling for the suffering of the few leads to disastrous consequences for the many.

— Paul Bloom, Against Empathy

The first order of business is to disrupt the notion that as a person with a computer science degree and/or work experience, you have all the skills you need to become an exceptional engineer.

— Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google