Stanford University mathematician Keith Devlin puts it, the golden ratio as a definition for beauty really does seem to be “the myth that won’t go away.”

— Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love

“That change completely thwarts our architecture.” I’ve got some news for you, sunshine. If a change to the requirements breaks your architecture, then your architecture sucks.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Agile

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.

— Carl Jung, Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 2)

Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.

— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

When managers began trying to come up with scientific studies of the most time- and energy-efficient ways to deploy human labor, they never applied those same techniques to themselves—or if they did, the effect appears to have been the opposite of what they intended. As a result, the same period that saw the most ruthless application of speed-ups and downsizing in the blue-collar sector also brought a rapid multiplication of meaningless managerial and administrative posts in almost all large firms.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs