Innate mechanisms are important not because everything is innate and learning is unimportant, but because the only way to explain learning is to identify the innate mechanisms that make learning possible.

— Steven Pinker, Language, Cognition, and Human Nature

You can’t protect yourself against your own people’s incompetence.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware

The news, far from being a “first draft of history,” is closer to play-by-play sports commentary.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

The prevailing feeling is that too many opportunities are opening too quickly and that our ability to modify genes is outpacing our capacity for making wise and farsighted use of the skill.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

But he knows that his freedom from company clocks doesn’t stem from corporate altruism. “They don’t want us to know how many hours we work. If we did, they’d have to pay us a lot more….

— Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine