Douglas Hofstadter quotes

The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps. (Douglas Hofstadter)
Irrationality is the square root of all evil. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
It always takes longer than you expect, even if you take Hofstadter's Law into account. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful cannot lead to all truths. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism . ... Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories ... human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon - which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
The Strange Loop phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
No reference is truly direct-every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over. It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth. (Douglas Hofstadter)
If the meanings of true and false were switched, this sentence wouldn't be false. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us dies. Memory is part of it, yes, but I think it's much more than memory. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
For 13 to be unlucky would require there to be some kind of cosmic intelligence that counts things that humans count and that also makes certain things happen on certain dates or in certain places according to whether the number 13 'is involved' or not (whatever 'is involved' might mean). View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
I would like to understand things better, but I don't want to understand them perfectly. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
We all have heard it claimed that 13 is an 'unlucky number.' Indeed, there are many hotels in America that for this very reason claim not to have a 13th floor, in the sense that there is no button bearing the label '13' in their elevators (I recently stayed in one in New York, in fact). View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Solomon: Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence. Hofstadter: I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me. Solomon: So fix it. Hofstadter: The next day someone will fix it back. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Reality includes creating every real connection and reference. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Which statement seems more true: (1) I have a brain. (2) I am a brain. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don't have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I'm a little more respectful of ants. (Douglas Hofstadter)
You make decisions, take actions, affect the world, receive feedback from the world, incorporate it into yourself, then the updated 'you' makes more decisions, and so forth, 'round and 'round. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
This type of paradox is quite characteristic of Zen. It is an attempt to "break the mind of logic". View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
I am not shooting at immortality through my books, no. Nor do I think Chopin was shooting at immortality through his music. That strikes me as a very selfish goal, and I don't think Chopin was particularly selfish. I would also say that I think that music comes much closer to capturing the essence of a composer's soul than do a writer's ideas capture the writer's soul. Perhaps some very emotional ideas that I express in my books can get across a bit of the essence of my soul to some readers, but I think that Chopin's music probably does a lot better job. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter