Reality is not up to us.

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought

Legacy modernizations themselves are anti-patterns. A healthy organization running a healthy system should be able to evolve it over time without rerouting resources to a formal modernization effort.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

Heart had a predilection for judging people not by their looks or manners or political views, but almost purely by how smart he believed them to be. Or, as he liked to put it, by how many neurons per cubic centimeter their brains contained.

— Matthew Lyon, Katie Hafner, Where Wizards Stay Up Late

…a retort to those who, wishing to humble us, quote St Augustine’s anatomically correct observation that Inter faeces et urinam nascimur : ‘We are born between faeces and urine’. It’s true. But we are the only living creatures who articulate and reflect on this fact – and in Latin.

— Anja Publications, Philosophy Now

What is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations, and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness, man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground