James Gleick Quotes - Page 2

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• Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.

  James Gleick

  New York, Butterfly, Air

  Chaos prologue (1987)

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• Children and scientists share an outlook on life. If I do this, what will happen? is both the motto of the child at play and the defining refrain of the physical scientist. ... The unfamiliar and the strange - these are the domain of all children and scientists.

  James Gleick

  Children, Play, Outlook On Life

  James Gleick (1992). “Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman”, Pantheon

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• The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.

  James Gleick

  Book, Would Be, Culture

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• We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of time as a medium in which we exist.

  James Gleick

  Thinking, Flow, Metaphor

  James Gleick (2016). “Time Travel: A History”, p.129, Pantheon

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• I can't remember the last book that taught me so much, and so well, about what it means to be human.

  James Gleick

  Book, Mean, Lasts

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• He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

  James Gleick

  Essence, Knowing, Doubt

  James Gleick (2011). “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”, p.585, Open Road Media

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• Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a few yards and fade to oblivion. The evanescence of the spoken word went without saying. So fleeting was speech that the rare phenomenon of the echo, a sound heard once and then again, seemed a sort of magic.

  James Gleick

  Communication, Writing, Echoes

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• For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.

  James Gleick

  Powerful, Knowledge, Creativity

  James Gleick (2011). “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”, p.509, Open Road Media

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• "Half genius and half buffoon," Freeman Dyson ... wrote. ... [Richard] Feynman struck him as uproariously American-unbuttoned and burning with physical energy. It took him a while to realize how obsessively his new friend was tunneling into the very bedrock of modern science.

  James Gleick

  Science, Richard Feynman, Energy

  James Gleick (2011). “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”, p.8, Open Road Media

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• As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars.

  James Gleick

  Book, Gun, Technology

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• Vengeful conquerors burn books as if the enemy's souls reside there, too.

  James Gleick

  Book, Soul, Enemy

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• It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.

  James Gleick

  Art, Book, Cds

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• The Internet has taken shape with startlingly little planning? The most universal and indispensable network on the planet somehow burgeoned without so muchasa boardofdirectors, never minda mergers-and- acquisitions department. There is a paradoxical lesson here for strategists. In economic terms, the great corporations are acting like socialist planners, while old- fashioned free-market capitalism blossoms at their feet.

  James Gleick

  Taken, Feet, Acting

  1994 In the NewYork Times Magazine, 1 May

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• As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldnt necessarily be good.

  James Gleick

  Philosophy, Book, Europe

  "TMI: We've Always Had Too Much Information (And We've Survived Just Fine)" by James Gleick, bigthink.com.

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• Running for president is the new selfie.

  James Gleick

  Running, President

  Twitter post from Jun 16, 2015

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• To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being.

  James Gleick

  Becoming, Chaos, States

  1987 Chaos.

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• Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

  James Gleick

  Thinking, Language, Paradox

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• When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. Or are we Yahoos?

  James Gleick

  Firsts, Gulliver, Watches

  James Gleick (2000). “Faster: The Acceleration of Just about Everything”, Vintage

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• Cyberspace, especially, draws us into the instant.

  James Gleick

  Cyberspace, Draws, Instant

  James Gleick (2000). “Faster: The Acceleration of Just about Everything”, Vintage

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• At its most fundamental, information is a binary choice. In other words, a single bit of information is one yes-or-no choice.

  James Gleick

  Choices, Fundamentals, Information

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