“Whew, this might be getting a bit confusing. I hope you are following me so far. This is the point in every Theory of Computation course at which students either throw up their hands and say "I can't get my mind around this stuff!" or clap their hands and say "I love this stuff!"
Needless to say, I was the second kind of student, even though I shared the confusion of the first.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“This statement is not provable.” Think about it for a minute. It’s a strange statement, since it talks about itself—in fact, it asserts that it is not provable. Let’s call this statement “Statement A.” Now, suppose Statement A could indeed be proved. But then it would be false (since it states that it cannot be proved). That would mean a false statement could be proved—arithmetic would be inconsistent. Okay, let’s assume the opposite, that Statement A cannot be proved. That would mean that Statement A is true (because it asserts that it cannot be proved), but then there is a true statement that cannot be proved—arithmetic would be incomplete. Ergo, arithmetic is either inconsistent or incomplete.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“complex system: a system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“Linearity is a reductionist’s dream, and nonlinearity can sometimes be a reductionist’s nightmare. Understanding the distinction between linearity and nonlinearity is very important and worthwhile. To”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“As the nineteenth-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau put it, “All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“In short, what Brown, Enquist, and West are saying is that evolution structured our circulatory systems as fractal networks to approximate a “fourth dimension” so as to make our metabolisms more efficient. As West, Brown, and Enquist put it, “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional … Fractal geometry has literally given life an added dimension.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“Turing’s first goal was to make very concrete this notion of definite procedure. The idea is that, given a particular problem to solve, you can construct a definite procedure for solving it by designing a Turing machine that solves it. Turing machines were put forth as the definition of “definite procedure,” hitherto a vague and ill-defined notion.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“idea models—models that are simple enough to study via mathematics or computers but that nonetheless capture fundamental properties of natural complex systems.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“Tony Rothman points out, “Why the second law should distinguish between past and future while all the other laws of nature do not is perhaps the greatest mystery in physics.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“Information, as narrowly defined by Shannon, concerns the predictability of a message source. In the real world, however, information is something that is analyzed for meaning, that is remembered and combined with other information, and that produces results or actions. In short, information is processed via computation.”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“reached. In dynamical systems theory, each of these abrupt period doublings is called a bifurcation. This succession of bifurcations culminating in chaos has been called the “period doubling route”
― quote from Complexity: A Guided Tour
“It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Gods Themselves
“But... we'll always have Paris." I pause, thinking this through. "At least, you'll have it. And you can tell me about it.”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from Remember Me?
“This was the wrong way because - because it wasn't the right way.”
― Michelle Paver, quote from Wolf Brother
“I shall be satisfied if young people who read this record of our lives and adventures should learn from it how admirably suited is the peaceful, industrious life of a cheerful and united family to the foundation of strong, pure, and manly character.”
― Johann David Wyss, quote from The Swiss Family Robinson
“Lords of blue and Lords of gold,
Lords of wind and waters wild,
Lords of time that's growing old,
When will come the season mild?
When will come blue Madoc's child?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Immortality
The Goddess Test
Lucky
The History of Tom J...
Perelandra
Autobiography of a Y...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
