“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
“Reading is human contact, and the range of our human contacts is what makes us what we are. Just imagine you live the life of a long-distance truck driver. The books that you read are like the travelers you take into your cab. If you give lifts to people who are cultured and profound, you'll learn a lot from them. If you pick up fools, you'll turn into a fool yourself.”
― Victor Pelevin, quote from The Sacred Book of the Werewolf
“His wives had discovered early on what a poor or frightening prospect of a father he presented and they had protected themselves and got out.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Solar
“As the manager sits before a performance, as the critics wait like hungry dogs to rip apart the performance, they all become entwined in the theatrics of it all.”
― Isabella Kruger, quote from Afterlife
“All men are a disappointment. No matter what anyone says.”
― Candace Bushnell, quote from Summer and the City
“You've been a part of me forever. Don't you know that? I breathe your name in every exhalation.”
― Charlie Kaufman, quote from Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script
The Trees
The Hanging Tree
Dwellers of Darkness
Remember Me
Sadie the German She...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.
