73 Quotes by Herbert A. Simon

Anything you cannot communicate without reading will be forgotten instantly.

We measure our success not only by the quality of teaching and research on our own campus, but by our influence on intellectual and educational trends in the nation and internationally.

To make interesting scientific discoveries, you should acquire as many good friends as possible who are energetic, intelligent and knowledgeable as they can be. You will find all the programs you need are stored in your friends, and will execute productively and creatively as long as you don’t interfere too much.

In essence our failure was a vivid demonstration, which I have never forgotten, that theories, however plausible and “obviously” valid, can be destroyed totally by the obstinate facts of the real world. Davis had brought us an unbeatable scheme for raising cattle profitably. The cattle had a different scheme. No doubt my later deep skepticism of the a priorism of mainstream economics had some of its origins in this experience.

One finds limits by pushing them.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.