Quotes

A collection of quotes I've enjoyed over the years loosely organized.

Sources are linked where possible.

Bret Victor has a quotes page that provided some inspiration.

Technology & Society

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.

• Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

• Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics

Computing

Today’s computers and apps are products, created by professional elites for consumers. To use a computer means to constrain one’s work and thought to the features of these mass-produced “tiny worlds”. This is utterly unlike real literacy, which is an ability that we teach to every person, empowering them to create their own writing to express any possible idea without constraint. There exists no corresponding form of computing: an ability which could be taught to every person, empowering them to create their own computing environments to express any possible idea computationally.

• Bret Victor, Dynamicland Non-profit Narrative

Thus, programs should be written for people to read and only incidentally for machines to execute.

• Abelson & Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Personal Mastery: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.

• Daniel Ingalls, Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

Every program is part of some other program and rarely fits.

• Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming

a lot of processes in the industry i work in now rely on spreadsheets

like really janky ones with hours of people's lives burned away by copy/paste weekly or daily and pointing and clicking, following a checklist

so i think "aha! i can help!" and i replace the spreadsheet with an automated process

and hours per week are saved and i am a hero and it feels great

but then they need to make a little change and they can't, they have to go through me, i have effectively taken their power away

• pho4cexa, on mastodon

The Human Experience

To find my home in one sentence, concise as if hammered in metal, not to enchant anybody, not to earn a name in posterity, an unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.

• Czeslaw Milosz, Unattainable Earth