Douglas Hofstadter Quotes

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

• Truth
• Words
• Powerful

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Quotes to Explore

• Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious.

  

  Sam Harris
  • Life
  • Good
  • Focus

• It's always an honor to represent your country.

  

  Sammy Sosa
  • Country
  • Always
  • Honor

• We need to protect the privacy rights of all Americans, and that means stopping the federal government from spying on the cellphones and emails of law-abiding citizens.

  

  Ted Cruz
  • Law
  • Government
  • Need

• The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

  

  Otto von Bismarck
  • History
  • Write
  • Main Thing

• The actress they'd hired had refused to appear naked in front of the camera. I didn't like to appear naked either, but the first thing I did was take off my clothes and jump into the pool completely naked.

  

  Victoria Abril
  • Jump
  • Clothes
  • Camera

• Real Madrid is the most important thing that happened to me, both as a footballer and as a person.

  

  Zinedine Zidane
  • Important
  • Real
  • Me

• Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.

  

  Queen Latifah
  • Up
  • Time
  • Long

• It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.

  

  Wendell Berry
  • Learn
  • Better
  • Than

• I like what it is to sing, or to be with the others singing, to make music, but the fuss and all the things that are the exterior part of a career, has never interested me.

  

  Victoria de los Angeles
  • Music
  • Career
  • Interested

• I don't have any particular goals in making a recording. In a way the recording is itself the goal. The music comes into my mind, and from there the main job is to give form to it.

  

  Mahavishnu John McLaughlin
  • Music
  • Mind
  • Job

• The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

  

  E. M. Forster
  • Life
  • Art
  • Sadness

• This world is too hard for me to leave my kids, without me supervising and being there for them.

  

  Fat Joe
  • World
  • Kids
  • Me

• The film business creates a large amount of waste, and I'm not immune to waste in the business.

  

  Ian Somerhalder
  • Business
  • Film
  • Waste

• Architecture will always express the technical and social progress of the country in which it is carried out. If we wish to give it the human content that it lacks, we must participate in the political struggle.

  

  Oscar Niemeyer
  • Country
  • Political
  • Wish

• But if I played well and prepared myself properly, then all I had to do was control myself and put myself in a position to win.

  

  Jack Nicklaus
  • Control
  • Myself
  • Win

• You can't propel a nation to move forward if all you are doing is taking something from them.

  

  Adam Beach
  • You
  • Doing
  • Nation

• Guys who are charismatic and fun-loving and sweet and generous are the ones I want to date.

  

  Victoria Justice
  • Fun
  • Want
  • Sweet

• All you needed back then was a blow dryer and a dream.

  

  Taylor Dayne
  • Dream
  • You
  • Blow

• Doing my first movie, I realized I could get into real bad habits. If you're the star, all you have to do is show up, and 20 people say, 'Do you want anything? What is it? Let me get it for you.' Believe me, you get spoiled very quickly. I saw some of my contemporaries allow themselves to have that fame, thinking they could handle it. It messed them up.

  

  Val Kilmer
  • People
  • Up
  • Believe

• The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but "one weedy species.

  

  Elizabeth Kolbert
  • Novel
  • Extinction
  • Asteroid

• I leave now to return. Travel far to be close.

  

  Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa
  • Travel
  • Leave
  • Return

• I have been to hell and back. I have seen the edge. I have seen the dark side of life.

  

  Natalie Cole
  • Life
  • Dark
  • Hell

• It is not our sexual preferences, the color of our skin, the language we speak, nor the religion we practice that creates friction, hatred and wars amongst in society. It is our words and the words of our leaders that can create that disparity.

  

  Yehuda Berg
  • Society
  • Words
  • Practice

• 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
  • Truth
  • Words
  • Powerful