if truth is our aim, we must be resigned to achieving it to a very limited extent, and without certainty. To redefine the aim so that its achievement is largely guaranteed, through various forms of reductionism, relativism, or historicism, is a form of cognitive wish-fulfillment. Philosophy cannot take refuge in reduced ambitions. It is after eternal and nonlocal truth, even though we know that is not what we are going to get.

— Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere

time when learning how to learn (and unlearn) is central to success. Instead of hiding from change, let’s embrace it. Each time we try something new, we get better at getting better. Experience builds competence and confidence, so we’re ready for the big changes, like re-thinking what we do.

— Peter Morville, Intertwingled

Though it’s easy to sneer at national income as a shallow and materialistic measure, it correlates with every indicator of human flourishing…

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

The little A+ SNOOTlet is actually in the same dialectal position as the class’s “slow” kid who can’t learn to stop using ain’t or bringed. Exactly the same position. One is punished in class, the other on the playground, but both are deficient in the same linguistic skill—viz., the ability to move between various dialects and levels of “correctness,” the ability to communicate one way with peers and another way with teachers and another with family and another with T-ball coaches and so on.

— Alan Jacobs, How to Think

Good programming is not born from mere technical competence. I’ve seen highly intellectual programmers who can produce intense and impressive algorithms, who know their language standard by heart, but who write the most awful code.

— Kevlin Henney, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know