By offering individuals the opportunity for heroic engagements with fate, gambling fulfilled an existential need for “action” or consequential activity in an increasingly bureaucratic society that deprived its citizens of the opportunity to express their character in public settings of risk.

— Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction

The word Null entered computing jargon in 1965, when Sir Tony Hoare introduced it in ALGOL W as a way of marking missing data, ‘simply because it was so easy to implement’. He later repented and called it his ‘billion-dollar mistake’.

— Gojko Adzic, Humans vs Computers

success is largely a matter of Avoiding the Most Likely Ways to Fail[d. ], and since every Bug advances us significantly along that path, we may hearken back to the advice given in the Preface and urge the following Policy: CHERISH YOUR BUGS. STUDY THEM

— John Gall and D.H.Gall, Systemantics. The Systems Bible

People who have inherited the most active form of the D4 receptor are more likely to believe in miracles and to be skeptical of science; the least active forms correlate with “rational materialism.”

— Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape

The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters