There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

Wealth is not the same thing as money.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. (Bertrand Russell)

— Haim Shapira, Eight Lessons on Infinity

Understanding the trade-offs that we face is a vital, fundamental aspect of engineering decision-making. If we make our system more secure, it will be more difficult to use; if we make it more distributed, we will spend more time integrating the information that it gathers. If we add more people to speed up development, we will increase the communication overhead, coupling, and complexity, all of which will slow us down.

— David Farley, Modern Software Engineering

…the boldest design decisions, whoever made them, have accounted for a high fraction of the goodness of the outcome. These bold decisions were made due sometimes to vision, sometimes to desperation. They were always gambles, requiring extra investment in hopes of getting a much better result.

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