American - Economist | June 15, 1916 - February 9, 2001
Forget about Nobel prizes; they aren't really very important.
Herbert A. Simon
ImportantForgetPrizesVeryReally
To deal with these problems - of world population and hunger, of peace, of energy and mineral resources, of environmental pollution, of poverty - we must broaden and deepen our knowledge of nature's laws, and we must broaden and deepen our understanding of the laws of human behavior.
NatureKnowledgePeaceEnvironmental
Whereas economic man maximises, selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices, looks for a course of action that is satisfactory or 'good enough'.
GoodBestManActionEnoughLooks
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
PovertyAttentionInformationWealth
All correct reasoning is a grand system of tautologies, but only God can make direct use of that fact.
GodSystemReasoningOnlyGrandUse
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design.
BusinessArchitecturePaintingDesign
The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function.
GoalsMoreOrderThingsFunction
I don't care how big and fast computers are, they're not as big and fast as the world.
WorldComputersCareFastBigHow
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.
TechnologyBetterQuestionsCreate
Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.
KnowledgeBestKindAncestorsPiano
The classical theory of omniscient rationality is strikingly simple and beautiful.
BeautifulSimpleTheoryOmniscient
I like to think that since I was about 19, I have studied human decision-making and problem-solving.
ThinkHumanDecision-MakingLike
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