That Douglass and King could approvingly quote Jefferson, himself a hypocritical and in some ways dishonorable man, does not compromise the rationality of their arguments but reinforces it. We should care about people’s virtue when considering them as friends, but not when considering the ideas they voice. Ideas are true or false, consistent or contradictory, conducive to human welfare or not, regardless of who thinks them.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. OLIVER CROMWELL [1650]

— Frederick P. Jr. Brooks, The Design of Design

A major breakthrough of the Scientific Revolution—perhaps its biggest breakthrough—was to refute the intuition that the universe is saturated with purpose.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains.

— Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct

…the professional often commits the error of deriding the work of the amateur for not being sufficiently professional; and this error is much less excusable than that made by the amateur in underestimating the distance between himself and the professional.

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming