13 Quotes & Sayings By Herbert Simon

Herbert A. Simon was born in New York City on August 5, 1927, and grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College in 1946 and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1950 Read more

He taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology (1948–51) and The Johns Hopkins University (1951–56). From 1956 to 1957 he was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in mathematical logic. In 1958 Simon joined the faculty of Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) as an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science.

He became a full professor in 1965 and retired in 1986. From 1961 to 1965 he was also a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Engineering, where he worked on information theory with Richard Hamming. In 1965 Simon joined IBM Research as a principal researcher working on algorithmic design theory.

Since 1986 he has been a Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University.

1
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 Simon
2
The world is vast, beautiful, and fascinating… even awe-inspiring, but impersonal. It demands nothing of me, and allows me to demand nothing of it. Herbert Simon
3
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. Herbert Simon
4
I don't care how big and fast computers are, they're not as big and fast as the world. Herbert Simon
5
The proper study of mankind is the science of design. Herbert Simon
6
Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment. Herbert Simon
7
Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational. Herbert Simon
8
In the computer field, the moment of truth is a running program; all else is prophecy. Herbert Simon
9
Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. Herbert Simon
10
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. Herbert Simon
11
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 Simon
12
One finds limits by pushing them. Herbert Simon