He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion!

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

Were GUIs a brilliant design innovation that made computers more human-centered and therefore accessible to the masses, leading us toward an unprecedented revolution in human society, or an insulting bit of audiovisual gimcrackery dreamed up by flaky Bay Area hacker types that stripped computers of their power and flexibility and turned the noble and serious work of computing into a childish video game?

— Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning…Was the Command Line

A characteristic of insecure people is that they try to make others feel inferior either by talking way above their level or by being condescending. The job of a secure person is to figure out how to speak to others at their level of understanding.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

…there is more to kindness and morality than empathy. To think otherwise is either to define empathy so broadly as to gut it of all content or to have a parched and unimaginative view of the moral psyche.

— Paul Bloom, Against Empathy

Organizations that refuse to take responsibility for the situations in which they put their own employees struggle to achieve operational excellence.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire