There is always a tendency for rich customers to buy expensive solutions, even when cheap solutions are better, because the people offering expensive solutions can spend more to sell them.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Accountability has its role, but it’s much more important to understand the problem at hand and try to fix it directly than to create process-driven accountability.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

…mere instruction in probability fails to provide lifetime immunity to statistical fallacies. Students forget it as soon as the exam is over and they sell their textbooks, and even when they remember the material, almost no one makes the leap from abstract principles to everyday pitfalls.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

People can only be social friends if they don’t try to upstage or outsmart one another.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

If you think it’s simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.

— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way