73 Quotes by Herbert A. Simon

Coverage of material is a snare and a delusion. You begin where students are prepared to begin; and you carry them as far as you can without losing them.

Teaching is not entertainment, but it is unlikely to be successful unless it is interesting.

There is no use in lecturing unless a class is listening. And they will only listen if you are saying something they think they can understand and seems relevant. If you pace up and down you can tell from their moving head whether they are following you.

We invented a computer program capable of thinking non-numerically, and thereby solved and venerable mind/body problem, explaining how a system composed of matter can have the properties of mind. Opening the way to automate tasks that had previously required human intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has had much the same effect as Darwin's theory. Both aroused in some people anxieties about their own uniqueness, value and worth.

We have adopted the policy of Sorel of propaganda of the deed. The best rhetoric comes from building and testing models and running experiments. Let philosophers weave webs of words; such webs break easily.

When I examine my experimental research, I find to my embarrassment I rarely provided a control condition. What could I have possibly learned from these ill-designed experiments? The answer (it surprised me) is that you can test theoretical models without a control condition.

We invented a whole new class of computer programming languages known as list processing languages. The basic idea is that whenever a piece of information is stored in memory, additional information should be stored with it telling where to find the next associated piece of information.

..it may be comforting to recall that detailed longitudinal analysis of the behavior of a single solar system was the foundation stone for Kepler's laws, and ultimately Newton's.