Although the future is not predictable in any detail, it is manageable as an aggregate phenomenon.

Maybe we ought to have a world in which things are divided between people kind of fairly.

The simplest scheme of evolution is one that depends on two processes; a generator and a test. The task of the generator is to produce variety, new forms that have not existed previously, whereas the task of the test is to cull out the newly generated forms so that only those that are well fitted to the environment will survive.

Most of us really aren't horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us. Put 'em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature.

Human knowledge has been changing from the word go and people in certain respects behave more rationally than they did when they didn't have it. They spend less time doing rain dances and more time seeding clouds.

I realized that you could formulate theories about human and social phenomena in language and pictures and whatever you wanted on the computer, and you didn't have to go through this straitjacket, adding a lot of numbers.

Technology may create a condition, but the questions are what do we do about ourselves. We better understand ourselves pretty clearly and we better find ways to like ourselves.

Time and again, we have found the 'idle' truths arrived at through the process of inquiry to be of the greatest moment for practical human affairs.

Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.

All correct reasoning is a grand system of tautologies, but only God can make direct use of that fact.

I like to think that since I was about 19, I have studied human decision-making and problem-solving.

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.

Because he treats the world as rather empty and ignores the interrelatedness of all things (so stupefying to thought and action), administrative man can make decisions with relatively simple rules of thumb that do not make impossible demands upon his capacity for thought.

Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognise surprising and unusual phenomena.

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.

The proper study of mankind is the science of design.

The density of settlement of economists over the whole empire of economic science is very uneven, with a few areas of modest size holding the bulk of the population.

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.

In the computer field, the moment of truth is a running program; all else is prophecy.

The classical theory of omniscient rationality is strikingly simple and beautiful.