…to appreciate how a meritocracy works, you need to first recognize that not everyone is listened to equally.

— Jim Whitehurst and Gary Hamel, The Open Organization

Evil is also the gaze which sees evil everywhere around it

— Georg Wilkhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit

One reason to format the code in a uniform way is so that nobody can “own” a piece of code just by formatting it in his or her private way.

— Kevlin Henney, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone. The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we’re told. The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another. The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it’s a precious mote and, for the moment, it’s the only home we have. The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them. The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and a mate. The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave—an indication that perhaps flag-waving and space exploration do not mix. The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

You can’t do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and be in business tomorrow

— Stephen Orban, Ahead in the Cloud