A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation. Norbert Wiener More Quotes by Norbert Wiener More Quotes From Norbert Wiener 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 slave-labor machines technology We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment. Norbert Wiener new-environment our-environment environment The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belonging to acquiescence and hence to weakness. Norbert Wiener progress weakness simple 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 quality important determination 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 robots struggle lying 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 example giving 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 machines decision past 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 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 simple running numbers There are no answers, only cross references. Norbert Wiener murphys-law crosses answers Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith. Norbert Wiener have-faith faith men 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 grieving school 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 discovery science 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 growth land men Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. Norbert Wiener future progress math To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Norbert Wiener adequate information 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 may looks Any useful logic must concern itself with Ideas with a fringe of vagueness and a Truth that is a matter of degree. Norbert Wiener vagueness degrees ideas We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. Norbert Wiener may rivers water 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 men science
