Norbert Wiener Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

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

  Norbert Wiener

  Energy, Information, Matter

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

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

  Norbert Wiener

  Witty, Cat, Mathematical

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• In all important respects, the man who has nothing but his physical power to sell has nothing to sell which it is worth anyone's money to buy

  Norbert Wiener

  Men, Important, He Man

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.154, Da Capo Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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”

  7 Copy quote

• A professor is one who can speak on any subject - for precisely fifty minutes.

  Norbert Wiener

  Math, Science, Engineering

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• If the human being is condemned and restricted to perform the same functions over and over again, he will not even be a good ant, not to mention a good human being.

  Norbert Wiener

  Ants, Function, Humans

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.52, Da Capo Press

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

Page 1 of 3

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin