Sensibilities toward violence have changed so much that religious people today compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality, while getting their actual morality from more modern principles.

— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature

There is a great deal of historical evidence to suggest that a society which loses its identity with posterity and which loses its positive image of the future loses also its capacity to deal with present problems, and soon falls apart. . .

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

An articulated guess beats an unspoken assumption.

— The Design of Design, Frederick P. Jr. Brooks

It is a common mistake to undertake a sophisticated design approach that the team isn’t committed to carrying all the way through.

— Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design

Regardless of everyone’s best intentions, putting a developer in charge of the smoke test is too much like putting a fox in charge of the chicken coop.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development