If life and existence were an enjoyable state, then everyone would reluctantly approach the unconscious state of sleep and would gladly rise from it again. But the very opposite is the case, for everyone very willingly goes to sleep and unwillingly gets up again.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

It’s programming if ‘clever’ is a compliment, but it’s software engineering if ‘clever’ is an accusation.

— Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google

By definition, what works cannot be irrational; about every single person I know who has chronically failed in business shares that mental block, the failure to realize that if something stupid works (and makes money), it cannot be stupid.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

Our ability to adapt and therefore to accept everything is one of our greatest dangers. Creatures that are completely flexible, changeable, can have no fixed morality.

— Stanislaw Lem, Seth Shostak, and Michael Kandel, His Master’s Voice

…the term bug was popularized by American computer scientist Grace Hopper in 1947 when an error in the Harvard Mark II computer was traced to a moth trapped in a relay.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs