Just be sure that the programmers working on a story are not also writing the acceptance tests for that story.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Agile

This idea — that the bottom level, though 100 percent responsible for what is happening, is nonetheless irrelevant to what happens — sounds almost paradoxical, and yet it is an everyday truism.

— Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop

If we could understand the reason for suffering, God would no longer be hidden. And only if God remains concealed, remains a deus abscondus, can faith escape contamination by coercion.

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

It’s rare to see a major problem caused by lack of skill. It’s nearly always attitude, and attitudes are hard to change.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

— David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary