The point there was that fragmenting any knowledge worker’s time over many different tasks assures that he or she will be thrust into two or more different work groups, none of which is likely to jell into a real team.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware

My impression is that good design receives more lip service than any other activity in software development and that few developers really do design at all. A design architect who works for Microsoft said that in 6 years of interviewing more than 200 candidates for software-development positions, he had interviewed only 5 who could accurately describe the concepts of “modularity” and “information hiding”

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

…he could force the people in his group into “good behavior,” such as being less argumentative, the result would be losing much of the creative manic energy for which he hired those people.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

…the most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.

— Angela Duckworth, Grit

…the dog boasts to the wolf all the contraptions of comfort and luxury he has, almost prompting the wolf to enlist. Until the wolf asks the dog about his collar and is terrified when he understands its use. “Of all your meals, I want nothing.” He ran away and is still running.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game