Software is complicated because it tries to model the irreducible complexity of the world.

— Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime

The primary controversy here is that too many people in the computing field think that reuse is a brand-new idea. As a result, there is enormous (and often hyped) enthusiasm for this concept, an enthusiasm that would be more realistic if people understood its history and its failure to grow over the years.

— Robert L. Glass, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

The same can happen in friendships and marriages in which both partners would rather do something together than stay home, but differ in what they most enjoy. The partner with the superstition or hang-up or maddeningly stubborn personality that categorically rules out the other’s choice will get his or her own.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

A clear argument has to lay out an inferential pathway, starting from what the audience already knows or accepts. If you don’t recurse far enough, you’re just talking to yourself.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Map and Territory

Freedom of the will is an illusion which cannot be shaken off, but, as great philosophers have said, it is an illusion nevertheless, and it derives solely from ignorance of true causes.

— Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy, and Michael Ignatieff, The Hedgehog and the Fox