The number of programmers who really understand what they are doing comprise only about 10% of all the programmers I’ve ever talked to, worked with, or heard about.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Understanding Software

‘Becoming more beautiful’ is a consequence of enhanced strength; it is the expression of a victorious will, of increased coordination, of a harmonising of all strong desires. Of an infallibly perpendicular stress and balance. The simplifications of logic and geometry are a necessary consequence of the enhancement of strength.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Advanced beginners and competent practitioners often confuse software design patterns with recipes, sometimes with disastrous results.

— Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

…philosophy is no more an instrument of politics than it is a prop for morality.

— Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought

the artist is the figure who, above all others, imposes values without discussion, opens up perspectives and invents worlds without needing to demonstrate the legitimacy of his propositions, still less to prove them by a refutation of those works which preceded his own. Like the aristocracy, the artist commands without arguing with anyone or anything

— Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought