The primary obstacle to success is an unwillingness to define a small, clear set of goals and commit to them for an entire project.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

…there is a whiff of sadism in programming, a heroic self-immolation on the pyre of complexity.

— Kent Beck, Tidy First?

It’s far more reliable to get good at cheap validation than it is to get great at consistently picking the right solution.

— Will Larson, An Elegant Puzzle

How much you truly “believe” in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

OK, but apart from breakthroughs in optics, mathematics, mechanics, explaining gravity, inventing calculus, something about trigonometry, predicting how planets move, and other stuff that we don’t understand, what has Isaac Newton ever done for us?

— Myles King, Ethical Truth in Light of Quantum Mechanics