It is true that humanity is faced with many problems. It always has been but perhaps not always with such keen awareness of them as we have today. We might be more optimistic if we recognized that we do not have to solve all of these problems. Our essential task—a big enough one to be sure—is simply to keep open the options for the future or perhaps even to broaden them a bit by creating new variety and new niches. Our grandchildren cannot ask more of us than that we offer to them the same chance for adventure, for the pursuit of new and interesting designs, that we have had.

— Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial

A solitary mind is actually a chorus.

— Charles Fernyhough, The Voices Within

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