We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
-Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950.
Tag: Quotes
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that once it is competently programmed and working smoothly—it is completely honest.
–Isaac Asimov, Change! Seventy-One Glimpses of the Future, 1981
Milton Friedman on the Concentration of Power
Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
–Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962.
The More Numerous The Laws . . .
The more numerous laws, the more corrupt the government.
-Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27
Whatever Is Rightly Done
Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.
Henry Royce
How Easy It Is to Make People Believe A Lie . . .
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!
-Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 2