Unfortunately the universe doesn’t agree with me. We’ll see which one of us is still standing when this is over.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided

Will technology increase the gap between rich and poor? It will certainly increase the gap between the productive and the unproductive.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Consultant and author Jerry Weinberg has an answer of sorts: He suggests that we don’t work overtime so much to get the work done on time as to shield ourselves from blame when the work inevitably doesn’t get done on time.

— Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, Peopleware

The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.

— Edsger W.Dijkstra, How Do We Tell Truths That Might Hurt?

Not everyone recognizes that addiction can appear in larger systems and in other guises—such as the dependence of industry on government subsidy, the reliance of farmers on fertilizers, the addiction of Western economies to cheap oil or weapons manufacturers to government contracts.

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems