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
“I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. “Exceptional” refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.”
― Daniel Keyes, quote from Des fleurs pour Algernon
“suddenly remembered a beautiful verse by the great Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran: “Mayhap a funeral among men is a wedding feast among the angels.” I imagined my mother at the side of her mother and father, with her own little ones gathered in her arms.”
― Jean Sasson, quote from The Complete Princess Trilogy: Princess; Princess Sultana's Daughters; and Princess Sultana's Circle
“Hem şunu bil ki, oğlum,
hiç ve hiçbir meslek
hiç ve hiçbir mezhep
ve onun salikleri
ilahi esasatın dışında yaklaşamaz bize,
ve dost olamaz.
Sema ve zemini idare eden kuvvet
saadetini isteseydi insanların
derhal bahtiyar kılardı onları.”
― Nâzım Hikmet Ran, quote from Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse
“Lo imposible no puede haber sucedido; por tanto, lo imposible tiene que ser posible, a pesar de las apariencias.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Mord im Orientexpress
“Solitude is addictive. Once you discover how peaceful it is, you no longer want or need to deal with people anymore.”
― Nicola Haken, quote from Broken
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