Quotes

i. “Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined.” (Charles Mackay)

ii. “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” (-ll-)

iii. “Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity.” (-ll-)

iv. “Women liked nothing better than making you defend yourself, and once you started, she had won.” (Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams, Book Eleven of The Wheel of Time (p. 198)).

v. “….what adventure is worth leaving your wife to die alone?” (Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams, Book Eleven of The Wheel of Time (p. 200)).

vi. “I have always been ready to die for her.” […] “Better to live for her, though, wouldn’t you say?” (Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams, Book Eleven of The Wheel of Time (p. 816))

vii. “Being in control wasn’t so much about the power you had, but the power you implied that you had.” (Robert Jordan, The Gathering Storm, Book 12 of The Wheel of Time (p. 116))

viii. “He felt like going drinking, forgetting who he was — and who people thought he was — for a while. But if he got drunk, he was likely to let his face show by accident. Perhaps begin to talk about who he really was. You never could tell what a man would do when he was drunk, even if that man was your own self.” (Robert Jordan, Towers of Midnight, Book 13 of The Wheel of Time (p. 349))

ix. “He glanced at himself in the glass’s reflection, making certain the coat was straight. Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.” (Robert Jordan, Towers of Midnight, Book 13 of The Wheel of Time (p. 679))

x. “There seems to be an idealistic form of geek thinking that holds that if only we made decisions better, we would never make mistakes. I was a young adherent, a worshipper at the altar of “If Only I Were Infinitely Smart.” Fortunately, I got over it. I learned the value of reversibility […] and realized the value of making decisions reversible. […] In general, we should treat reversible decisions differently than irreversible decisions. There’s great value in reviewing, double-checking, triple-checking irreversible decisions. The pace should be slow and deliberate. […] How about reversible decisions? Most software design decisions are easily reversible. […] we can so easily reverse a decision if it turns out to be wrong. Because there is so little value to avoiding mistakes, we shouldn’t invest much in doing so.” (Kent Beck, Tidy First? (pp. 103-105))

xi. “Software development and architecture have patterns and antipatterns that can be applied (or recognized) in writing code and architecting systems. A pattern is a reusable solution that has been shown to be effective when used to solve a problem. […] Antipatterns are not the direct opposite of patterns. They are solutions that look like they solve a problem but have consequences that outweigh any potential benefits. […] This book applies the concept of patterns and antipatterns to communication. People often quote Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder’s 1997 paper “Big Ball of Mud” (and for good reason): “If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture.” It means that creating good architecture requires an investment, but not investing will result in bad architecture that costs more in the long run. The same thing should be said for communication: If you think good communication is expensive, try bad communication. Investing in good (successful) communication is less expensive than bearing the costs of bad (unsuccessful) communication.” (Jacqui Read, Communication Patterns (pp. 10-11)).

xii. “Mixing levels of abstraction is a communication antipattern that has a counterpart in the coding world. If you have ever coded, you will likely know mixing levels of abstraction as a sin or a code smell.2 Although putting all the information someone could need into one diagram might seem appropriate, this leads to clutter and confusion from the audience’s perspective. […] Using different levels of abstraction across multiple diagrams allows you to communicate appropriately for the audience, while still ensuring that all relevant information is captured. […] The C4 model is a hierarchy of abstractions. It uses an abstraction first approach (prioritizing abstraction and building everything else around it). […] C4 models, based around a hierarchy of abstractions, are an excellent way to illustrate the need to keep levels of abstraction separate in diagrams. This separation rule applies to all types of diagrams.” (ibid, pp. 28-33)

xiii. “It does make me feel guilty, the knight notes, that we have to treat them like this. They’re victims too.
It was truth, but one that Nomad had long ago made peace with. You didn’t always get to fight the right people. In fact, you often had to fight the wrong ones — at least until you could stop the men and women who gave the orders.” (Brandon Sanderson, The Sunlit Man, p. 327)

xiv. “The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them.” (J. M. Barrie)

xv. “Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.” (-ll-)

xvi. “I’m not young enough to know everything.” (-ll-)

xvii. “The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” (-ll-)

xviii. “Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?” (-ll-)

xix. “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength.” (Archibald Joseph Cronin)

xx. “On the morning of 16 December General Middleton’s VIII Corps had a formal corps reserve consisting of one armored combat command and four engineer combat battalions. In dire circumstances Middleton might count on three additional engineer combat battalions which, under First Army command, were engaged as the 1128th Engineer Group in direct support of the normal engineer operations on foot in the VIII Corps area. In exceptionally adverse circumstances, that is under conditions then so remote as to be hardly worth a thought, the VIII Corps would have a last combat residue-poorly armed and ill-trained for combat-made up of rear echelon headquarters, supply, and technical service troops, plus the increment of stragglers who might, in the course of battle, stray back from the front lines. General Middleton would be called upon to use all of these “reserves.” Their total effect in the fight to delay the German forces hammering through the VIII Corps center would be extremely important but at the same time generally incalculable, nor would many of these troops enter the pages of history.1
A handful of ordnance mechanics manning a Sherman tank fresh from the repair shop are seen at a bridge. By their mere presence they check an enemy column long enough for the bridge to be demolished. The tank and its crew disappear. They have affected the course of the Ardennes battle, even though minutely, but history does not record from whence they came or whither they went. A signal officer checking his wire along a byroad encounters a German column; he wheels his jeep and races back to alert a section of tank destroyers standing at a crossroad. Both he and the gunners are and remain anonymous. Yet the tank destroyers with a few shots rob the enemy of precious minutes, even hours. A platoon of engineers appears in one terse sentence of a German commander’s report. They have fought bravely, says the foe, and forced him to waste a couple of hours in deployment and maneuver. In this brief emergence from the fog of war the engineer platoon makes its bid for recognition in history. That is all. A small group of stragglers suddenly become tired of what seems to be eternally retreating. Miles back they ceased to be part of an organized combat formation, and recorded history, at that point, lost them. The sound of firing is heard for fifteen minutes, an hour, coming from a patch of woods, a tiny village, the opposite side of a hill. The enemy has been delayed; the enemy resumes the march westward. Weeks later a graves registration team uncovers mute evidence of a last-ditch stand at woods, village, or hill.” (Hugh Cole, The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge (US Military History of WW II), chapter XIV).