…all Marx added to this was the idea of burning and punishing the Master Class here and now instead of waiting for “God” to attend to the matter post mortem.

— Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

Smart people have a problem, especially (although not only) when you put them in large groups. That problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly anything.

— Alan Jacobs, How to Think

When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

— T. S. Eliot, The Perfect Critic

If you can’t get teams to adopt proper code linting, your attempts to roll out a comprehensive quality program are doomed.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

What, after all, does daily social life consist in? A disparaging remark about another group; a rumor or story meant to draw outrage; a news story dug up by partisans seeking advantage; a crude expression of allegiance to an institution as flawed as its denigrated rivals. All of these are fundamental to the fabric of social life, especially in times when social life is unusually politicized…

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought