…the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.

— David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules

Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

— Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month

I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil

— Christopher Hitchens, The Enemy

Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive.

— Angela Duckworth, Grit

We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be “informavores”, epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.

— Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett