There is only one real way to determine how long something is going to take, and that’s by doing it. Any other mechanism is cheating.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Craftsmanship

There is a sense of eliteness on a good team. Team members feel they’re part of something unique. They feel they’re better than the run of the mill. They have a cocky, SWAT Team attitude that may be faintly annoying to people who aren’t part of the group.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware

It’s no accident that the state-of-the-art is called “the bleeding edge.”

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

Wealth is not the same thing as money.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters