Many biases involve being insufficiently moved by dry, abstract information…

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Map and Territory

If you’ve been in the software business for any time at all, you know that there are certain common problems that plague one project after another. Missed schedules and creeping requirements are not things that just happen to you once and then go away, never to appear again. Rather, they are part of the territory. We all know that. What’s odd is that we don’t plan our projects as if we knew it. Instead, we plan as if our past problems are locked in the past and will never rear their ugly heads again. Of course, you know that isn’t a reasonable expectation.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Waltzing With Bears

Meaning is a fundamental human desire. We crave beautifully written poetry because we enjoy the richness of its meaning. We thirst for meaningful work, if not meaningful lives. We long to connect meaningfully with people. Seeking meaning is a natural expression of living life fully…

— Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

Rational elites . . . know everything there is to know about their self-contained technical or scientific worlds, but lack a broader perspective. They range from Marxist cadres to Jesuits, from Harvard MBAs to army staff officers. . . . They have a common underlying concern: how to get their particular system to function. Meanwhile . . . civilization becomes increasingly directionless and incomprehensible.

— John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards

Say what you will about religion, but the best adherents to it are those who make the effort to understand what they believe, beyond just believing what they are told.

— Clean Agile, Robert C. Martin