It takes might to centralize;
it takes magic to decentralize.

“You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. [...] No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code.”
— Ken Thompson, Reflections on Trusting Trust (1983)

“A cherished characteristic of computers is their deterministic behaviour: software gives the same result for the same input. This makes it possible, in theory, to build binary packages from source packages that are bit for bit identical to the published binary packages. In practice however, building a binary package results in a different file each time. This is mostly due to timestamps stored in the builds. [...] Compiling software is resource intensive and it is valuable to have someone compile software for you. Unless it is possible to verify that compiled software corresponds to the source code it claims to correspond to, one has to trust the service that compiles the software.”
— Jos van den Oever, Is that really the source code for this software? (2013)

“The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
— Michel Foucault

“The art isn't the art, the art is never the art. The art is the thing that happens inside you when you make it, and the feeling in the heart of the beholder.”
— No Boilerplate, The Cult Of Done

“There is an invisible hand in politics that operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market.”
— Milton Friedman

“The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.”
— W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903

“There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.”
— Francis Galton, 1869

“Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur.”
— Jack Welch

“If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable. And if another Sphinx should arise to propose another enigma to man–saying, what burden is that which only is insupportable by human fortitude? I should answer at once: It is the burden of the Incommunicable.”
— Thomas De Quincey

“[Chess] is not only the most delightful and scientific, but the most moral of amusements. Unlike other games in which lucre is the end and aim of the contestants, it commends itself to the wise, by the fact that its mimic battles are fought for no prize but honor. It is eminently and emphatically the philosopher's game. Let the chess board supercede the card table, and a great improvement will be visible in the morals of the community.”
— Paul Morphy, 1859

“The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.”
— Garry Kasparov, 1995

“The Intentionality of the mind not only creates the possibility of meaning, but limits its forms.”
— John Searle, 1983

“One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.”
— John Searle, 1990

“[I]t is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.”
— Hans Moravec, 1988

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
— Martin Buber

“The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier.”
— Zimmermann's Law, 2013

“Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton.
With writing you have the extraordinary power of a Turing machine.”
— Manuel Blum

“Once you entomb mathematics in an artificial language à la Hilbert, once you set up a completely formal axiomatic system, then you can forget that it has any meaning and just look at it as a game that you play with marks on paper that enable you to deduce theorems from axioms. You can forget about the meaning of the game, the game of mathematical reasoning, it's just combinatorial play with symbols! There are certain rules, and you can study these rules and forget that they have any meaning!”
— Gregory Chaitin

“The role of outstanding scientists in influencing younger associates is repeatedly emphasized in the interviews with laureates. Almost invariably they lay great emphasis on the importance of problem-finding, not only problem-solving.”
— Robert K. Merton, 1968

“[A coherent] worldview gives us a framework to interact with the world and connect ideas to each other. When this is functional, the parts reinforce and support each other, allowing us to navigate the chaotic and weird universe we exist within.”
— Alan Smith, Is Tor an NSA honeypot?

“Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming. [...] In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.”
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)