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

Don’t talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name all kinds of great men who were not very gifted. They acquired greatness, became ‘geniuses’ (as we put it) through qualities about whose lack no man aware of them likes to speak: all of them had that diligent seriousness of a craftsman, learning first to construct the parts properly before daring to make a great whole. They allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy