C O Alan Turing Quotes & Sayings

The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely. — Alan Turing

There is, however, one feature that I would like to suggest should be incorporated in the machines, and that is a 'random element.' Each machine should be supplied with a tape bearing a random series of figures, e.g., 0 and 1 in equal quantities, and this series of figures should be used in the choices made by the machine. This would result in the behaviour of the machine not being by any means completely determined by the experiences to which it was subjected, and would have some valuable uses when one was experimenting with it. — Alan Turing

If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness. — Neal Stephenson

Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain. — Alan Turing

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. — Alan Turing

I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still ... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory. — Alan Turing

The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer. — Alan Turing

I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard. — Alan Turing

No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. — Alan Turing

Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books. — Alan Turing

Codes are a puzzle. A game, just like any other game. — Alan Turing

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. — Alan Turing

Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes hollow. — Alan Turing

I have had a dream indicating rather clearly that I am on the way to being hetero, though I don't accept it with much enthusiasm either awake or in the dreams. — Alan Turing

I wrote about Alan Turing, the great mathematician and code-breaker. He was an absolutely different person, certainly more brilliant than I ever will be. — David Lagercrantz

From a contradiction you may deduce everything — Janna Levin

The brilliant British mathematician, eccentric, and computer pioneer Alan Turing came up with the following test: A computer can be said to be intelligent if it can (on average) fool a human into mistaking it for another human. The converse should be true. A human can be said to be unintelligent if we can replicate his speech by a computer, which we know is unintelligent, and fool a human into believing that it was written by a human. Can one produce a piece of work that can be largely mistaken for Derrida entirely randomly? — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Finding such a person makes everyone else appear so ordinary ... and if anything happens to him, you've got nothing left but to return to the ordinary world, and a kind of isolation that never existed before. — Alan Turing

Up to a point, it is better to just let the snags [bugs] be there than to spend such time in design that there are none. — Alan Turing

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human. — Alan Turing

I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven't the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out. — Alan Turing

We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge. — Alan Turing

It would probably never have occurred to him that his own difficulties with the world were akin to those suffered by women-- as with the men's committee meetings held over his head, almost as if he were not there, and the way people took little notice of what he had said or written, but remained obsessed by details of manners or appearance. Women had to learn to compensate for these indignities by making a special effort, but Alan Turing made no such attempt. He expected the male world to work for him, and was baffled when it did not. — Andrew Hodges

I want a permanent relationship, and I might feel inclined to reject anything which of its nature could not be permanent. — Alan Turing

Alan Turing is so important to me and to the world, and his story is so important to be told, so it was a big thing to take up, and I was a little petrified. Like, who am I to write the Alan Turing story? He's one of the great geniuses of the 20th century - who was horribly persecuted for being gay - and I'm a kid from Chicago. — Graham Moore

Alan Turing, however, cared nothing for the opinion of society, and therefore was ahead of his time in laying bare the role of the state. — Andrew Hodges

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. — Alan Turing

It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. — Gordon Brown

The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. — Alan Turing

On 25 May 2011, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, speaking to the parliament of the United Kingdom, singled out Newton, Darwin and Alan Turing as British contributors to science. Celebrity is an imperfect measure of significance, and politicians do not confer scientific status, but Obama's choice signalled that public recognition of Alan Turing had attained a level very much higher than in 1983, when this book first appeared. — Andrew Hodges

Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. — Alan Turing

The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other men, whose techniques he absorbs during the first twenty years of his life. He may then perhaps do a little research of his own and make a very few discoveries which are passed on to other men. From this point of view the search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than by individuals. — Alan Turing