…stupidity, real stupidity, is not knowing that you don’t know. Stupid people think they know something when they don’t, or they have no idea that there is something more to know. This sort of stupidity is something that can be found in nearly every field, and software development is no exception.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Understanding Software

The Strongest Poison ever known Came from Caesars Laurel Crown

— William Blake, The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

— Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Abraham Lincoln used to ask this riddle: “If we call tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” When the respondent could answer “five,” Lincoln would admonish, “No, four. Calling it a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming

Yes, harping on every small detail, particularly when you’re confident about your field of expertise, can be annoying, trying, and frustrating. But it’s also dramatically effective in cutting down on mistakes and even major catastrophes.

— Peter Hollins, Mental Models