By using simplistic extrinsic motivators to goad performance, managers excuse themselves from harder matters such as investment, direct personal motivation, thoughtful team formation, staff retention, and ongoing analysis and redesign of work procedures.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware

The Greek notion of science held it above vulgar pragmatics, leading to a pedantic tendency that tolerated intellectual laxity, sometimes with tragic consequences.

— Noah Kennedy, The Industrialization of Intelligence

Self-determinism is a rather subtle concept. It means that one determines one’s own path independently of general laws of causality, where “independence” describes a situation in which one is constrained by, but also free to exploit at will, the laws of physics and biology.

— Christopher Michael Langan, The Art of Knowing

…we are brought to appreciate the utterly non-obvious fact that our mind holds pleasure and displeasure as the main currency of our psychological transactions.

— Roman Gelperin, Addiction, Procrastination, and Laziness

The rules of software are the same today as they were in 1946, when Alan Turing wrote the very first code that would execute in an electronic computer.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Architecture