Norbert Wiener Quotes

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• We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.

  Norbert Wiener

  Environment, New Environment, Our Environment

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.46, Da Capo Press

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• Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.

  Norbert Wiener

  Technology, Slave Labor, Machines

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society”, p.112, Hachette UK

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• The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past.

  Norbert Wiener

  Past, Decision, Machines

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.33, Da Capo Press

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• There are no answers, only cross references.

  Norbert Wiener

  Answers, Crosses, Murphys Law

  "Norbert Wiener 1894-1964". Book by Pesi R. Masani, Vita Mathematica, p. 337, 1990.

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• To live effectively is to live with adequate information.

  Norbert Wiener

  Adequate, Information

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.18, Da Capo Press

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• Just as entropy is a measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of organization. In fact, it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of its entropy, and the negative logarithm of its probability. That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems.

  Norbert Wiener

  Organization, Giving, Example

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.21, Da Capo Press

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• The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.

  Norbert Wiener

  Lying, Struggle, Robots

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• There is one quality more important than know-how.... This is know-how by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.

  Norbert Wiener

  Determination, Quality, Important

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.183, Da Capo Press

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• Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.

  Norbert Wiener

  Future, Math, Progress

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.46, Da Capo Press

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• Information is information; it is neither matter nor energy.

  Norbert Wiener

  Energy, Information, Matter

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• Our tissues change as we live: the food we eat and the air we breathe become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and the momentary elements of our flesh and bone pass out of our body every day with our excreta. We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves

  Norbert Wiener

  Air, Rivers, Water

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.96, Da Capo Press

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• The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belonging to acquiescence and hence to weakness.

  Norbert Wiener

  Simple, Progress, Weakness

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.47, Da Capo Press

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• Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith.

  Norbert Wiener

  Faith, Men, Have Faith

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.193, Da Capo Press

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• The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat.

  Norbert Wiener

  Witty, Cat, Mathematical

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• What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.

  Norbert Wiener

  Interesting, Granted, Results

  "A New Theory of Measurement: A Study in the Logic of Mathematics". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society s2-19 (1): 181–205, 1921.

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• It is easy to make a simple machine which will run toward the light or run away from it, and if such machines also contain lights of their own, a number of them together will show complicated forms of social behavior.

  Norbert Wiener

  Running, Simple, Numbers

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.33, Da Capo Press

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• Any use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status is a degradation and a waste.

  Norbert Wiener

  Degradation, Use, Waste

  Norbert Wiener (1950). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”

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• The most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences were those which had been neglected as a no-man's land between the various established fields.

  Norbert Wiener

  Men, Land, Growth

  Norbert Wiener (1961). “Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine”, p.2, MIT Press

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• What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.

  Norbert Wiener

  Powerful, School, Grieving

  Norbert Wiener (1954). “The human use of human beings: cybernetics and society”

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• We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
  A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.

  Norbert Wiener

  Rivers, Water, May

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.96, Da Capo Press

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• In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.

  Norbert Wiener

  Real, Looks, May

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.40, Da Capo Press

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• One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor ... is to discourage ... from expecting too much from mathematics.

  Norbert Wiener

  Learning, Science, Discovery

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• I have said that science is impossible without faith. ... Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith ... Science is a way of life which can only fluorish when men are free to have faith.

  Norbert Wiener

  Faith, Science, Men

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• Any useful logic must concern itself with Ideas with a fringe of vagueness and a Truth that is a matter of degree.

  Norbert Wiener

  Ideas, Degrees, Vagueness

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• The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.

  Norbert Wiener

  Running, Long, Survival

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.46, Da Capo Press

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