The main component of stasis-derived management is what I call a production mentality. It is evident in the way managers talk. Here I am not referring to people who manage the assembly line, but people who manage development efforts. They will tell you about building a development “factory ” (production word), about “measuring ” its “throughput ” (both measuring and throughput are production concepts), about “process ” (production concept), about “quality control ” (production again), about “efficiency ” and “return on investment ” and “waste management ” and “cost reduction” (all valid concepts for dealing with relative stasis). These are the signs of risk avoidance, of failing to get on with the business of the twenty-first century.

— Tom DeMarco, Slack

Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.

— Plutarch and Bernadotte Perrin, The Complete Works of Plutarch

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