By definition, what works cannot be irrational; about every single person I know who has chronically failed in business shares that mental block, the failure to realize that if something stupid works (and makes money), it cannot be stupid.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

Our ability to adapt and therefore to accept everything is one of our greatest dangers. Creatures that are completely flexible, changeable, can have no fixed morality.

— Stanislaw Lem, Seth Shostak, and Michael Kandel, His Master’s Voice

…the term bug was popularized by American computer scientist Grace Hopper in 1947 when an error in the Harvard Mark II computer was traced to a moth trapped in a relay.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

— Peter Singer, Ethics in the Real World

Both scientist and conqueror began by admitting ignorance – they both said, ‘I don’t know what’s out there.’ They both felt compelled to go out and make new discoveries. And they both hoped the new knowledge thus acquired would make them masters of the world.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens