One possible definition of a distributed system is a system whose parts can fail independently….

— Jamie Allen, Reactive Design Patterns

Physics is a lot like sex; sure it has a practical use, but that’s not why we do it.

— Matt Parker, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension

Political talk builds an exterior wall of words, a set of opinions built and reinforced by competitive passions: “I am this sort of person and not that.” It is a way to avoid the encounter with the difficult and humiliating social reality to which one belongs or for which one is responsible.

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought

We’ve always been amazed at companies that take their best engineers and — against their wishes — throw these engineers into management roles. This usually subtracts a great engineer from your team and adds a subpar manager.

— Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google

Throughout this book and in this chapter especially, the message has been don’t build for scale before you have scale. Build something that you will have to redesign later, even if that means building a monolith to start.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire