In the seventeenth century, René Descartes opted for reason over a divine source of knowledge. This came to be known as putting Descartes before the source.

— Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar…

Before the Reformation, almost no one believed that socially necessary labor was an ennobling activity. After the Reformation, almost everyone did

— James Livingston, Why Work? Breaking the Spell of The Protestant Ethic

This suggests that taking the outside view is an effective response to the planning fallacy: rather than trying to predict how many hiccups and delays your plans will run into by reflecting in detail on each plan’s particulars (the “inside view”), you can do better by just guessing that your future plans will work out roughly as well as your past plans.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Inadequate Equilibria

On a well-oiled team, different people will be willing to play different roles at different times, depending on what the team needs.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile; but he thinks he knows something when he does not; whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.

— Plato and Benjamin Jowett (Translator), Dialogues on the Trial & Death of Socrates