Claude Shannon Quotes

“We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it.”

“I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.”

“I am very seldom interested in applications. I am more interested in the elegance of a problem. Is it a good problem, an interesting problem?”

“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.”

“The enemy knows the system.”

“A few first rate research papers are preferable to a large number that are poorly conceived or half-finished.”

“A few first rate research papers are preferable to a large number that are poorly conceived or half-finished. The latter are no credit to their writers and a waste of time to their readers.”

“This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge.”

“Almost every problem that you come across is befuddled with all kinds of extraneous data of one sort or another; and if you can bring this problem down into the main issues, you can see more clearly what you're trying to do.”

“My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.”

“Another approach for a given problem is to try to restate it in just as many different forms as you can.”

“It changed circuit design from an art to a science.”

“It would be cheesy to compare him to Einstein. Einstein looms large, and rightly so. But we're not living in the relativity age, we're living in the information age. It's Shannon whose fingerprints are on every electronic device we own, every computer screen we gaze into, every means of digital communication.”

“I've always pursued my interests without much regard for financial value or value to the world. I've spent lots of time on totally useless things.”

“He's one of these people who so transform the world that, after the transformation, the old world is forgotten.”

“Whatever came up, he engaged it with joy, and he attacked it with some surprising resource — which might be some new kind of technical concept or a hammer and saw with some scraps of wood. For him, the harder a problem might seem, the better the chance to find something new.”

“He worked with his door closed, mostly. But if you went in, he would be very patient and help you along. He could grasp a problem in zero time. He really was quite a genius. He's the only person I know whom I'd apply that word to.”

“He created a whole field from scratch, from the brow of Zeus.”