Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology (‘Just do it!’) to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

A lack of focus on a shared language and knowledge of the problem domain results in a codebase that works but does not reveal the intent of the business.

— Scott Millett and Nick Tune, Patterns, Principles, and Practices of Domain-Driven Design

…your attempt to exchange your good judgment for company success will end up failing anyway: you’ll get held accountable for the lack of true impact where others who match the company’s expectation of how a leader appears will somehow slip upward.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading.

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

There is a famous statement by Augustine: If you love God you may do as you please. Alas, it is not so simple. The Spanish inquisitors loved God. The Christians who burned witches loved God. Promoters of the Children’s Crusade loved God. John Calvin loved God when he allowed Servetus to be burned at the stake. Martin Luther loved God when he proposed driving Jews out of Germany. Jephthah loved God when he killed his daughter. Abraham loved God when he was willing to murder his son. Moses loved God when he ordered his soldiers to kill the older women and the male children of the Midianites, but to keep the virgin girls for themselves. In the bloody wars between Christians and Muslims, between Protestants and Catholics, all sides loved God.

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener