Douglas Hofstadter quote: "For 13 to be unlucky would require there to be some kind of cosmic intelligence that counts things that humans count and that also makes certain things happen on certain dates or in certain places according to whether the number 13 'is involved' or not (whatever 'is involved' might mean)."

The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded prof...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

We all have heard it claimed that 13 is an 'unlucky number.' Indeed, there are many hotels i...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don't have too many qualms about putting a mos...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

There has to be a common sense cutoff for craziness, and when that threshold is exceeded, then the c...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

You make decisions, take actions, affect the world, receive feedback from the world, incorporate it ...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

One could probably liken the task of improvising a six-part fugue to the playing of sixty simultaneo...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

Since most women are kind of different from the top-model image, there is a constant losing battle o...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task
which it is perform...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

A computer program can modify itself but it cannot violate its own instructions — it can at best c...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

I don't feel I have the right to snuff the lives of chicken and fish.
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us die...
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

It always takes longer than you expect, even if you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep insi...
DOUGLAS R. HOFSTADTER

This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance.
DOUGLAS R. HOFSTADTER

Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyon...
DOUGLAS R. HOFSTADTER

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter...
DOUGLAS R. HOFSTADTER

[...] provability is a weaker notion than truth
DOUGLAS R. HOFSTADTER

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until ...
ELBERT HOFSTADTER

The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended betwe...
RICHARD HOFSTADTER

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism-a thing n...
RICHARD HOFSTADTER

Tocqueville saw that the life of constant action and decision which was entailed by the democratic a...
RICHARD HOFSTADTER

It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most o...
RICHARD HOFSTADTER

If mind is seen not as a threat but as a guide to emotion, if intellect is seen neither as a guarant...
RICHARD HOFSTADTER

To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that i...
RICHARD HOFSTADTER

While the scars of the monstrous Civil War still remain, the wounds have closed since 1865, in large...
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe...
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the gro...
TOMMY DOUGLAS

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

I don't mind being a symbol but I don't want to become a monument. There are monuments all o...
TOMMY DOUGLAS

Every chef has his treats. By that, I mean bits and pieces from things you're working on - crust...
TOM DOUGLAS

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like thi...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

God only knows what else is on the web about me.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I always wanted to get into the horror genre. I like scary movies. I want to go to the fan shows and...
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I had an obsession that I was male characters from movies.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I like doing movies that relate to people's experience.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I loved the idea of the Nerd as Hero, which Ghost World also had.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I want to be an animated character. I'm also doing more writing and directing.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I wore a lot of vintage clothing. I dressed like a reporter, with a little card in my hat. I had the...
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I'm a big fan of Albert Brooks, Nichols and May. I'd like to follow in their footsteps and d...
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I'm a huge poster collector.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I've done a few studio films in the last few years where I feel like I've done good work, an...
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

In high school, my goal was to be a writer for SNL, then I got into the acting.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

It was an interesting way to come across in my first big role. To work with Robert DeNiro was very e...
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

It's nice to see a movie where people are actually succeeding.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

We were big Saturday Night Live and Eddie Murphy fans.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

When I do a character, I try to base it on someone I have met or an experience I've had.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

When we were doing a scene, lots of times we would collapse giggling, because it seemed so silly bec...
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

I come from a pretty strange family.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

There's too much insecurity on studio sets, with all the people standing around, whispering.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

The best situation is where they cast you and then they trust you.
ILLEANA DOUGLAS

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you c...
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

It's very tough for me to focus. I'm like: 'Look, something shiny! No, focus. Oh, there ...
GABBY DOUGLAS

Smile, it's free therapy.
DOUGLAS HORTON

I was working on boats as a teenager, sweating like a pig during a summer job.
DOUGLAS LEONE

Catfish has a nice firm texture and mild flavor.
TOM DOUGLAS

The faux now of Twitter updates and things pinging at you - all the pulses from digitality that we t...
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

My wife and I decided to try and kick start our kitchens to a $15 minimum wage for cooks. I've p...
TOM DOUGLAS

Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than...
MICHAEL DOUGLAS

You may have a broken heart, but you may find someone else.
DOUGLAS BOOTH

There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his...
MICHAEL DOUGLAS

I don't have a cell phone because I know how horrible it is. Using your cell phone is like putti...
DOUGLAS TOMPKINS

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important o...
STEPHEN DOUGLAS

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and wh...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

He thinks with regret of the great days when he could at harvest time at least go down into Hungary ...
DOUGLAS REED

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.
NORMAN DOUGLAS

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?
NORMAN DOUGLAS

To find a friend one must close one eye - to keep him, two.
NORMAN DOUGLAS

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertising.
NORMAN DOUGLAS

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

In 2012, the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart o...
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

With 'Black Rain,' I spent a lot of time with homicide detectives, and I spent a lot of time...
MICHAEL DOUGLAS

If you're part of the Network Generation, you don't have to belong just to one nation. Dual ...
DOUGLAS ALEXANDER

Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one....
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

When you put an individual on the cover of a big picture magazine, like 'Life of Look', thei...
DOUGLAS KIRKLAND

When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography - Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bow...
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.
DOUGLAS YATES

The British actors I've met and worked with have all been very supportive of each other.
DOUGLAS BOOTH

This Network Generation have grown up in a connected world. With Skype, Facebook, Twitter and the In...
DOUGLAS ALEXANDER

Most of us still haven't grasped the fact that everything we commit to the digital space - not j...
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hyster...
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

I don't think tablets are where we should be focused. But I do think they could end up being an ...
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

When we settled our country, the dark forest was considered in some ways evil and something that you...
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

I get verklempt if I see a vintage TI-30 or TI-54 calculator. But I don't think I'd want to ...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

No matter how invasive the technologies at their disposal, marketers and pollsters never come to ter...
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

Most people that derail as leaders in the corporate world, it's not because they couldn't do...
DOUGLAS CONANT

It's very important that we keep these special, wild places. It defines the United States. Imagi...
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

Who doesn't love digging into a plate of crab cakes or going after a chilled cracked crab with c...
TOM DOUGLAS

I got my feet wet in a couple of shows. I did a cameo on my favorite show, 'The Vampire Diaries....
GABBY DOUGLAS

When I arrived at Campbell on January 8, 2001, the company had lost half its market value in the pri...
DOUGLAS CONANT

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buy...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

When I was a kid and my mom made tomato soup, she would cut buttered toast into squares and float th...
TOM DOUGLAS

I'm all for guys being butch and guys being men. I identify with that and appreciate that. But i...
KYAN DOUGLAS

I wanted to tell my story and where I came from and my background, because it was not easy.
GABBY DOUGLAS

It's just incredible how people come up to me and say, 'Gabby, you inspire me to do anything...
GABBY DOUGLAS

I would love to be a role model.
GABBY DOUGLAS

I wear makeup pretty much every day. For training, I usually do a lighter base, a lighter blush and ...
GABBY DOUGLAS

My mom used to tell me when I was little, 'When it rains, it's God's manifestation - a b...
GABBY DOUGLAS

You've got to be confident when you're competing. You've got to be a beast.
GABBY DOUGLAS

I've learned how to stay humble. I don't want to get in over my head because when you do tha...
GABBY DOUGLAS

Gospel music always relaxes me and calms my nerves.
GABBY DOUGLAS

By now, you've probably caught on to something: my mother is always standing by with just the ri...
GABBY DOUGLAS

Gold medals are made out of your sweat, blood and tears, and effort in the gym every day, and sacrif...
GABBY DOUGLAS

I had to face a lot coming through this journey, a lot of sacrifices, difficulties, challenges, and ...
GABBY DOUGLAS

You know, God has a plan for me, and I'm going to follow in his footsteps and just rejoice and b...
GABBY DOUGLAS

Technology has moved away from sharing and toward ownership. This suits software and hardware compan...
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to g...
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

I like to think of thoughts as living blossoms borne by the human tree.
JAMES DOUGLAS

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consent...
NORMAN DOUGLAS

I'm not gonna lie, I love Usain Bolt and Serena Williams. What I love about Serena is that she j...
GABBY DOUGLAS

The simplest way to prepare Dungeness crabs is to boil them in the shell and set them in front of yo...
TOM DOUGLAS

Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are...
MARY DOUGLAS

My first job was on Broadway. Then I went into the Navy. When I came out of the Navy, I went back to...
KIRK DOUGLAS

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

It is a fatal error to enter any war without the will to win it. •Douglas MacArthur All great...
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

The negative aspects of Scottish Nationalism are a kind of aggressive complacency, that sort of boas...
DOUGLAS DUNN

Some say that the universe is made so that when we are about to understand it it changes into somet...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been wid...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together...
DOUGLAS JERROLD

Love's like the measles, all the worse when it comes late.
DOUGLAS JERROLD

Reputations, like beavers and cloaks, shall last some people twice the time of others.
DOUGLAS JERROLD

Wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down immediately it is wanted. Men pay severely wh...
DOUGLAS JERROLD

Honest bread is very well--it's the butter that makes the temptation.
DOUGLAS JERROLD

I hope that no American . . . will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for...
DOUGLAS JERROLD

A pill that the present moment is daily bread to thousands.
DOUGLAS JERROLD

After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world.
DOUGLAS JERROLD

Greece's European neighbors were able step in and bolster the weak foundation on which Greece...
DOUGLAS WILDER

It's hard to legislate what people eat. People are getting fed up with being told what they can ...
TOM DOUGLAS

I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese, and it took...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Time is bunk.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Of course you can't 'trust' what people tell you on the web anymore than you can 'tr...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictu...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong i...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
DOUGLAS ADAMS

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that w...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they freq...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed o...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your pe...
TOM DOUGLAS

I don't know about Brad Pitt leaving that beautiful woman to go hold orphans for Angelina. I mea...
MICHAEL DOUGLAS

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

It is fatal to enter an war without the will to win it.
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

Where does personality end and brain damage begin?
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

Fashionable people can opt out of the fashion stream, but a stylish person never becomes unstylish u...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

Six silent people in a room got me to thinking about the voice we hear in our heads when we read, th...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

Knievel seemed braver and more brazen - and more unhinged - than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker...
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

I honestly believe that the next big leap in immersive technology will be very much like Brainstorm.
DOUGLAS TRUMBULL

To shuck oysters, you'll need an oyster knife, a handy tool with a sturdy handle and a short, ri...
TOM DOUGLAS

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the wa...
DOUGLAS WILDER

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Friends are like bras: close to your heart and there for support.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

As a professional journalist who nonetheless champions a 'people's' Internet, I am happy...
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.
DOUGLAS HURD

Lured by smooth roads onto a new turnpike, he read with surprise the rules he was handed, don't stop...
DOUGLAS WOOLF

Twentyone is too old to go anywhere alone, you know that. I want to go with someone. I don't mean as...
DOUGLAS WOOLF

Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tel...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Computers don't kill books; people do.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to "just go to ...
SCOTT DOUGLAS

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker's ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.”
“Yeah,” said the voice from...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Don't Panic.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things wi...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you m...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet g...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Experience is the best teacher.
PENELOPE DOUGLAS

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.
DOUGLAS PAGELS

Reality is frequently inaccurate.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whethe...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever ...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies a...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest iron...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND

I think we have different value systems." —Arthur
"Well mine's better." —Ford
DOUGLAS ADAMS

The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which ar...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."

"Ah, well, I'm...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the she...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

A cup of tea would restore my normality."

[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Screenpla...
DOUGLAS ADAMS

For 13 to be unlucky would require there to be some kind of cosmic intelligence that counts things that humans count and that also makes certain things happen on certain dates or in certain places according to whether the number 13 'is involved' or not (whatever 'is involved' might mean).

Douglas Hofstadter

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