Douglas R. Hofstadter · 880 pages
Rating: (3.2K votes)
“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”
“I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly.”
“This computer-generated pangram contains six a's, one b, three c's, three d's, thirty-seven e's, six f's, three g's, nine h's, twelve i's, one j, one k, two l's, three m's, twenty-two n's, thirteen o's, three p's, one q, fourteen r's, twenty-nine s's, twenty-four t's, five u's, six v's, seven w's, four x's, five y's, and one z.”
“Please, Oh please, publish me in your collection of self-referential sentences!”
“Supperational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers.”
“Wild Ones Tip #23
If a Wild One is screaming, just walk away. Trust me, we’re not dying.”
“There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.”
“I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.”
“the very notion of personality, which is what we are trying to get at here, seems to have very limited application to me and quite possibly to everyone else. Self is another dodgy concept, since I am, when I subject this 'I' to careful inspection, not much more than a flickering of affinities, habits, memories, and predilections that could go either way- towards neediness or independence for example courage or cowardice.”
“Fixing motives is like fixing blame-the further away from the act you get, the harder it is to single out one thing as having caused it.”
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