if we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus

…our mad rush toward the new, we tend to discard much of the old. (For example, software’s newest and most popular methodologies, like Extreme and Agile, tend to make a point of rejecting the accumulated wisdom of the older methodologies.)

— Robert L. Glass, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

As a rule of thumb, I estimate that a programming product costs at least three times as much as a debugged program with the same function.

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

…there’s a hard way to get grit and an easy way. The hard way is to do it by yourself. The easy way is to use conformity—the basic human drive to fit in—because if you’re around a lot of people who are gritty, you’re going to act grittier.”

— Angela Duckworth, Grit