Norbert Wiener Quotes

After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

I had no idea what I wanted, only that I wanted something, which is the worst kind of wanting.

Indistinctness is my forte.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.

Whether it happened so or not I do not know; but if you think about it you can see that it is true.

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

I do not like to talk about the future. I don't like to be one of those people. It's so easy to have a very vague idea and say, oh, computers will be 3D-ish and then 10 years later I'll say I predicted it 10 years ahead. I don't think that's honest and I don't think that's valid and worth anything.

When I was 16 I started keeping a diary in which I recorded my disagreements with the famous philosophers. I didn't insist that they were wrong, that I was right and I had to prevail. I just agreed and disagreed with them. I thought there was a high degree of probability that I was right and some other thinkers were wrong. But I wasn't positive about it.

Some is not a number. Soon is not a time.

Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .

It is better to have no ideas than false ones.

When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth... It turned out I could manage with 2 and some vague ideas.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

We take comfort, however, that mystery is not a synonym for contradiction.

All classifications in this world lack sharp boundaries, and all transitions are gradual.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

Probably." "Again with the probablys." "A world full of probablys," she said.

I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.