Durability of digital information

It is only slightly facetious to say that digital information lasts forever--or five years, whichever comes first.
-- Jeff Rothenberg, "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents," Scientific American 272, no. 1 (1995)

Feynmann on technology

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

-- Feynmann, Richard. What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character. New York, 1988, pg. 237.

Tufte on language

The vaguely quantitative words "significant" and "significantly" are used 5 times on this slide, with de facto meanings ranging from "detectable in largely irrelevant calibration case study" to "an amount of damange so that everyone dies" to "a difference of 640-fold." None of these 5 usages appears to refer to the technical meaning of "statistical significance."

-- Edward Tufte, On Columbia Evidence: Analysis of Key Slide + Return to Flight Follow-ups. [link]