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.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, quote from Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
“I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, quote from Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
“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.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, quote from Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
“Please, Oh please, publish me in your collection of self-referential sentences!”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, quote from Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
“Supperational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, quote from Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
Douglas R. Hofstadter
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date February 15, 1945
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“Have you ever really listened to birds chirping--really truly listened?
So pretty it makes your chest ache.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from The Good Luck of Right Now
“It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.”
― Sarah Orne Jewett, quote from The Country of the Pointed Firs
“There are no truths, only stories.”
― quote from Stray
“To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man. He seems to be quite familiar to us, not only as a public character but as a private character. His psychology is seriously taken into account in psychological fiction and psychological medicine. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about, or treating women in general with what is, I believe, known in the world of the film as 'rough stuff.' I have never happeend to come upon the evidence for this idea; and I do not know on what primitive diaries or prehistoric divorce-reports it is founded. Nor, as I have explained elsewhere, have I ever been able to see the probability of it, even considered a priori. We are always told without any explanation or authority that primitive man waved a club and knocked the woman down before he carried her off. But on every animal analogy, it would seem an almost morbid modesty and reluctance, on the part of the lady, always to insist on being knocked down before consenting to be carried off. And I repeat that I can never comprehend why, when the male was so very rude, the female should have been so very refined. The cave-man may have been a brute, but there is no reason why he should have been more brutal than the brutes. And the loves of the giraffes and the river romances of the hippopotami are affected without any of this preliminary fracas or shindy.”
― G.K. Chesterton, quote from The Everlasting Man
“Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float.
Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying.
Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The real issue is our elementary accord with Earth and the plant and animal kingdoms has to be revitalized and re-understood.
The burning question is, How?”
― Lawrence Anthony, quote from Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo
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