…in a field as complex and young as computing and data processing, there is massive ignorance and therefore massive ambiguity in doing our job. We really don’t know a best way to build software; it is unlikely we are going to find such a way in the near future.

— Robert L. Glass and Tom DeMarco, Software Creativity 2.0

…just as the retinues of a feudal lord might include servants whose only role was to polish his horses’ armor or tweeze his mustache before tournaments or pageants, so may present-day executives keep employees whose sole purpose is to prepare their PowerPoint presentations or craft the maps, cartoons, photographs, or illustrations that accompany their reports.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

If someone has spent decades of their career perfecting a skill, like reviewing applications or keeping a server running, and you then propose doing it in a completely new way that renders them a beginner again, the risk to their reputation and career probably means they will fight your progress.

— Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai, Hack Your Bureaucracy

Resisters of scientific thinking often object that some things just can’t be quantified. Yet unless they are willing to speak only of issues that are black or white and to foreswear using the words more, less, better, and worse (and for that matter the suffix –er), they are making claims that are inherently quantitative.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

Is anyone surprised at being cold in winter? At being sick at sea? Or at being jostled in the street? The mind is strong enough to bear those evils for which it is prepared

— Seneca, On Anger