…experiments comparing the effects of genuine drugs as compared to those of sugar pills show that between 60 percent and 90 percent of drugs depend, to some extent, on the placebo effect for their effectiveness.

— Richard Wiseman, 59 Seconds

…it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership.

— Tom DeMarco, Slack

Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first, from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.

— Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life

The physicist’s evident propensity to theorize, these scholars derived from sexual repression. Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience; the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to tame the pig but also to render it invisible.

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

…it’s not innovation that leads to success. It’s execution.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Understanding Software