“No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”

These disturbing phenomena [Extra Sensory Perception] seem to deny all our scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming.

One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, “My little computer said such a funny thing this morning”.

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.

A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

The original question, ‘Can machines think?’ I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.

No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain.

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields.

Codes are a puzzle. A game, just like any other game.

Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books.

Unless in communicating with it one says exactly what one means, trouble is bound to result.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.

If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.

The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.

The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely.

We’ve had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system?

The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.

China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.

[Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.

When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.

Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it’s the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.

In my view, the Western model of influencing the development of third world countries is doomed to failure.

But all development programs of the United States and the European countries unfortunately exclude the private sector, which could make investments based on profitability.