It was an okay vintage, if you could get past the fact that it was wine, and—stripped of the ability to get drunk on it—wine was just sour grape juic… - Charles Stross

Y2K was a real end-of-civilization problem. And the people who could deal with it treated it as such, working flat-out on disaster management for the last year-long countdown. With the result that the end-of-the-world scenario didn’t happen…causing everyone not directly involved to conclude that it was a false alarm.

Human consciousness isn’t optimized for anything, except maybe helping feral hominids survive in the wild.

I was hoping you might be able to help me with a question of character."
"Character." Angleton doesn't seem at all put out by Lockhart's refusal; he leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers. "There's a word I don't hear often enough these days. Especially coming from you."
"Of course not." Lockhart is dismissive. "It's a subjective value judgment and those don't sit comfortably with ticky-boxes and objective performance metrics."