I think it’s not an accident that we often use the imagery of magic to describe programming. We speak of computing wizards and we think of things happening by magic or automagically. And I think that’s because being able to get a machine to do what you want is the closest thing we’ve got in technology to adolescent wish-fulfillment.

— Peter Seibel, Coders at Work

In Orthodox Judaism there is a saying: “The previous generation is to the next one as angels are to men; the next generation is to the previous one as donkeys are to men.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

…programming languages are not just technology, but what programmers think in. They’re half technology and half religion.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

— William Zinsser, On Writing Well

Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind.

— Benedictus de Spinoza, A Spinoza Reader