Douglas Hofstadter

1945– · American physicist, computer scientist and professor of cognitive science

Topics: mathematics, programming, software design, software engineering

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

  — Douglas Hofstadter

• If the meanings of true and false were switched, this sentence wouldn't be false.

  — Douglas Hofstadter

• The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.

  — Douglas Hofstadter

• The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps.

  — Douglas Hofstadter

• 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.

  — Douglas Hofstadter

• No reference is truly direct—every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is.

  — Douglas Hofstadter