Herbert A. Simon Quotes

Is the destiny of the human species to sit back and play with our mouse and computer and imagine, fantasize?

Is the human race a universal constructor?

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

Computers do the calculating to allow people to transform the world.

Today, computers are almost second nature to most of us.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

Man has now become an adjunct to perfect and carry forward these conquests.

There are more clocks than ever - clocks on computers, on cell phones, on televisions, on any screen available, telling time to the digital second - but they all seem to matter less.

In the entire history of the human species, every tool we've invented has been to expand muscle power. All except one. The integrated circuit, the computer. That lets us use our brain power.

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

Humanity is smart. Sometime in the technology world we think we are smarter, but we are not smarter than you.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.

Computer technology is so built into our lives that it's part of the surround of every artist.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

People assume that computers will do everything that humans do. Not good. People are different from each other and they are all really different from computers.

Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.

Machines cannot make machines, unless back of them all are the brains and toil of men.

We are approaching a time when human intelligence alone will be incapable of managing a highly advanced society. Existing technologies are rapidly exceeding the human capacity to absorb and process information.

We should never forget that in the smartphone, the smart part is us creators.

Computers are the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created. Yet, we treat them largely as a black box; as if it were an alien artifact that magically appeared on desks, in homes, and in our pockets.

Not nature, but the "genius of mankind," has knotted the hangman's noose with which it can execute itself at any moment.

Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve; but no government-subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm.