Evolution is an inherently competitive process: The faster lion catches more prey than other lions, produces more offspring than other lions, and thus raises the proportion of fast lions in the next generation. This couldn’t happen if there were no competition for resources. If lion food existed in unlimited supply, the faster lions would have no advantage over the slower ones, and the next generation of lions would be, on average, no faster than the last generation. No competition, no evolution by natural selection.

— Joshua D. Greene, Moral Tribes

Failures in communication generally derive from sending a message to the wrong address. That is, your husband has an ego problem and you send a message to his mind.

— Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

Symbols are poor, unhandsome, though necessary, scaffolds of demonstration, and ought no more to appear in public, than the most deformed necessary business which you do in your chambers.

— Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 7

Why do people buy an expensive, complicated toaster when a simpler, less-expensive toaster would work just as well? Why all the buttons and controls on steering wheels and rearview mirrors? Because these are the features that people believe they want. They make a difference at the time of sale, which is when such features matter most. Why do we deliberately build things that confuse the people who use them? Answer: because the people want the features. Because the so-called demand for simplicity is a myth whose time has passed, if it ever existed.

— Donald A. Norman, Living with Complexity

When we think in terms of systems, we see that a fundamental misconception is embedded in the popular term “side-effects.”. . . This phrase means roughly “effects which I hadn’t foreseen or don’t want to think about.”. . . Side-effects no more deserve the adjective “side” than does the “principal” effect. It is hard to think in terms of systems, and we eagerly warp our language to protect ourselves from the necessity of doing so.

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems