11 Quotes by Konrad Zuse

Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider—to the disappointment of his very conventional parents, he no longer believed in God or religion.(Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer)

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

The rattling of the relays of the Z4 was the only interesting thing to be experienced in Zurich's night life!

Of course, we knew that the official reports were sketchy, if not falsified. But, in terms of information theory, this is precisely where the problem lay: How were we to reconstruct reality from incomplete or false reports? It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false. On the contrary, most news is completely correct, albeit tendentiously slanded; it is just that certain information is suppressed. One can adjust for the political slanting of the news, but there is virtually no way to fill in the omissions.

The belief in a certain idea gives to the researcher the support for his work. Without this belief he would be lost in a sea of doubts and insufficiently verified proofs.

I remember mentioning to friends back in 1938 that the world chess champion would be beaten by a computer in 50 years time. Today we know computers are not far from this goal.

The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.

The rattling of the relays of the Z4 was the only interesting thing to be experienced in Zurich’s night life!

Imagination,” Zuse used to say, “is the key to all progress.