Herbert Simon quotes

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves. (Herbert Simon)
One finds limits by pushing them. View quote
Herbert Simon
One of the first rules of science is if somebody delivers a secret weapon to you, you better use it. View quote
Herbert Simon
Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values, whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated. View quote
Herbert Simon
Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. View quote
Herbert Simon
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. View quote
Herbert Simon
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design. View quote
Herbert Simon
The proper study of mankind is the science of design. View quote
Herbert Simon
Whereas economic man maximises, selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices, looks for a course of action that is satisfactory or 'good enough'. View quote
Herbert Simon
Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational. View quote
Herbert Simon
There are no morals about technology at all. Technology expands our ways of thinking about things, expands our ways of doing things. If we're bad people we use technology for bad purposes and if we're good people we use it for good purposes. (Herbert Simon)
The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function. View quote
Herbert Simon
By 1985, machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do. View quote
Herbert Simon
The world is vast, beautiful, and fascinating, even awe-inspiring - but impersonal. It demands nothing of me, and allows me to demand nothing of it. View quote
Herbert Simon
In the computer field, the moment of truth is a running program; all else is prophecy. View quote
Herbert Simon
Maybe we ought to have a world in which things are divided between people kind of fairly. View quote
Herbert Simon
We need to augment and amend the existing body of classical and neoclassical economic theory to achieve a more realistic picture of economic process. View quote
Herbert Simon
Decision making processes are aimed at finding courses of action that are feasible or satisfactory in the light of multiple goals and constraints. View quote
Herbert Simon
The behaviour of individuals is the tool with which the organisation achieves its targets. View quote
Herbert Simon
Before a science can develop principles, it must possess concepts. Before a law of gravitation could be formulated, it was necessary to have the notions of "acceleration” and "weight.”. View quote
Herbert Simon
Definition of design = Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. (Herbert Simon)
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. View quote
Herbert Simon
Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment. View quote
Herbert Simon
I don't care how big and fast computers are, they're not as big and fast as the world. View quote
Herbert Simon
Forget about Nobel prizes; they aren't really very important. View quote
Herbert Simon