What spurs us to take care of our neighbor is the desire to act honorably and nobly in order to satisfy what we imagine is the standard that would be set by an impartial spectator.

— Russ Roberts, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

If you don’t feel “Fuck Yes!” about something, don’t agree to it. Don’t invite it into your life. That includes projects, music, relationships, food, medication…everything.

— Brennen Reece, Productivity for the Depressive Polymath

Microsoft therefore bears the same relationship to the Silicon Valley elite as the Beverly Hillbillies did to their fussy banker, Mr. Drysdale—who is irritated not so much by the fact that the Clampetts moved to his neighborhood as by the knowledge that when Jethro is seventy years old, he’s still going to be talking like a hillbilly and wearing bib overalls, and he’s still going to be a lot richer than Mr. Drysdale.

— Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning…Was the Command Line

A truism of all change initiatives is that people do what they want to do. The key to lasting change is to find problems or opportunities that people are aware of and have a desire to invest in and then help them achieve their goals, offering expertise only as requested and needed. Everything else will fail.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Agile

All you have to do in order to become an excellent programmer is fully understand what you are doing.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Understanding Software