David Gelernter Quotes

if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

Really good ideas are always good beyond what you anticipated originally.

Computers make people stupid.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

We can't share the earth with pure evil anymore than we can share the earth with smallpox.

I think the print media have failed to make the most of their opportunity. They may all disappear because they are approaching things in the wrong way.

Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad ones don't.

If this is the information age, what are we so well-informed about?

The book is a form in which some of the greatest masterpieces that mankind has ever achieved are expressed.

Readable text and authority so that readers know how to spend - no matter how much information there is, I have the same number of minutes in my day, and I need to look to sources that I trust.

There are great science books that were conceived as books. Feynman's famous introductory lectures in physics, which have a beginning and an end, which are written with style.

Abolishing the book is like abolishing the symphony, or sonata form, or the sonnet, or the wall painting.

At the same time, on the networks, there are thousands of groups that are building lifestreams, or lifestreaming for themselves in their own way. We'd love to see this activity.

There are certain subjects which seem to me can be taught very effectively online, although they aren't.

Surprise is the beginning of wisdom.

I think the universities as we know them will be dead in a future years. I'd like to see them replaced by something better, instead of something worse, and it's not clear which way it will go.

The book is a unit and is such a brilliant ergonomic unit.

The best computer scientists are...technologists who crave beauty.

I would love to see writing taught online because at university like Yale, there are not enough teachers who are able to teach writing well, or in some cases, there are none.

We still have books because they are so brilliantly suited to the way human beings absorb information and at their best, they are among the most beautiful things we have.

The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on.