Herbert A. Simon Quotes

American - Economist | June 15, 1916 - February 9, 2001

One finds limits by pushing them.

Herbert A. Simon

MotivationalLimitsPushingThem

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.

Herbert A. Simon

PovertyAttentionInformationWealth

The choices we make lead up to actual experiences. It is one thing to decide to climb a mountain. It is quite another to be on top of it.

Herbert A. Simon

MountainClimbChoicesTopLeadUp

There are no morals about technology at all. Technology expands our ways of thinking about things, expands our ways of doing things. If we're bad people we use technology for bad purposes and if we're good people we use it for good purposes.

Herbert A. Simon

GoodTechnologyPeopleThinkingBad

Viewed as a geometric figure, the ant's path is irregular, complex, and hard to describe.

Herbert A. Simon

PathHardComplexAntDescribe

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.

Herbert A. Simon

TimeReflectionSimpleBehaviorFind

My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into the fields of political science, economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and philosophy of science, among others.

Herbert A. Simon

ScienceMeResearchEconomicsGoal

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

Herbert A. Simon

TruthMomentTruth IsProphecyField

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

Herbert A. Simon

OpportunityKnowledgeNewMoreUs

The social sciences, I thought, needed the same kind of rigor and the same mathematical underpinnings that had made the 'hard' sciences so brilliantly successful.

Herbert A. Simon

ThoughtKindHardSameSuccessful

One of the first rules of science is if somebody delivers a secret weapon to you, you better use it.

Herbert A. Simon

ScienceBetterYouRulesFirstUse

By a combination of formal training and self study, the latter continuing systematically well into the 1940s, I was able to gain a broad base of knowledge in economics and political science, together with reasonable skills in advanced mathematics, symbolic logic, and mathematical statistics.

Herbert A. Simon

KnowledgeScienceMathematicsSelf

1234Next pageLast

Related Authors

Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Herbert A. Simon quotes