People who have inherited the most active form of the D4 receptor are more likely to believe in miracles and to be skeptical of science; the least active forms correlate with “rational materialism.”

— Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape

The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Don’t talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name all kinds of great men who were not very gifted. They acquired greatness, became ‘geniuses’ (as we put it) through qualities about whose lack no man aware of them likes to speak: all of them had that diligent seriousness of a craftsman, learning first to construct the parts properly before daring to make a great whole. They allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

Most can’t figure out why one can like rigorous knowledge and despise academics, yet they understand that one can like food and hate canned tuna.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

Many senior developers build the same types of applications year after year, and become bored with the monotony. Most developers would rather write a framework than use a framework to create something useful: Meta-work is more interesting than work. Work is boring, mundane, and repetitive, whereas building new stuff is exciting.

— Neal Ford, Rebecca Parsons and Patrick Kua, Building Evolutionary Architechtures