63 Quotes by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order – and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.

The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.

In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect.

Irrationality is the square root of all evil.

I am the thought you are now thinking.

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.

Meaning lies as much in the mind of the reader as in the Haiku.

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.