…the correlation between the esthetic and the pragmatic value of a program is not accidental—the more pleasing to the eye and mind, the more likely to be correct. Or, put more poetically, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming

There were two amazing things about structured programming. The first was that it was hyped as being a breakthrough in our ability to build software, and it was accepted and used by almost all programmers in almost all practitioner organizations. The second is that no research was ever performed to demonstrate that the claimed and hyped value existed.

— Robert L. Glass and Tom DeMarco, The Psychology of Computer Programming

Bias is a slippery statistical notion, which may disappear if you slice the data a different way. Discrimination, as a causal concept, reflects reality and must remain stable.

— Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie, The Book of Why

What people valued, economically, merely reflected what they believed to be important. This meant that real motivation had to lie in the domain of value, of morality.

— Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning

The financial success of the happiness industry relies heavily on the idea that circumstances matter little, that we are in complete control of our own mental state and can simply choose to upgrade it at will.

— Ruth Whippman, American the Anxious