Poverty, too, needs no explanation. In a world governed by entropy and evolution, it is the default state of humankind. Matter does not arrange itself into shelter or clothing, and living things do everything they can to avoid becoming our food. As Adam Smith pointed out, what needs to be explained is wealth.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

Hope is the rainbow over the cascading brook of life, swallowed up a hundred times by the spray.

— Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann, The Gay Science

What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

Without humility, a programmer is foredoomed to the classic pattern of Greek drama: success leading to overconfidence (hubris) leading to blind self-destruction. Sophocles himself could not frame a better plot (to reveal the inadequacy of our powers) than that of the programmer learning a few simple techniques, feeling that he is an expert, and then being crushed by the irresistible power of the computer (the Deus ex Machina).

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming

…there is not much overlap between the kind of software that makes money and the kind that’s interesting to write.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters