If you are the kind of person who values certainty over flexibility, you’ll likely use a lot of spies in your tests and you’ll tolerate the inevitable fragility. If, however, you are the kind of person who values flexibility over certainty, you’ll be more like me. You’ll prefer value and property tests over spies, and you’ll tolerate the nagging uncertainty.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Craftsmanship

Precisely because we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature—and this is what I am driving at—capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The more successful a company is in extracting every bit of capacity from its workers, the more it exposes itself to turnover and attendant human capital loss.

— Tom DeMarco, Slack

But what is happiness except a simple harmony between man and the life he leads?

— Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays

Strong managers don’t care when team members cut their hair or whether they wear ties. Their pride is tied only to their staff’s accomplishments.

— Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, Peopleware