Alan Turing Quotes

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. ~ Alan Turing

I'm not gay, but I don't think you have to be gay to have a gay hero. Growing up, Alan Turing was certainly mine. I'm also not the greatest mathematician of my generation. We have lots of biographical differences, but nonetheless, I always identified with him so much. ~ Graham Moore

We always knew that we didn't want to show Alan Turing in the act of suicide - it was our feeling that would tip over into melodrama too quickly and seem over-the-top. ~ Graham Moore

HIs chess-playing methods did the same thing - as did the games on the Colossi - and posed the question as to where a line could be drawn between the 'intelligent' and the 'mechanical'. His view, expressed in terms of the imitation principle, was that there was no such line, and neither did he ever draw a sharp distinction between the 'states of mind' approach and the 'instruction note' approach to the problem of reconciling the appearance of freedom and of determinism. ~ Andrew Hodges

Up to a point, it is better to just let the snags [bugs] be there than to spend such time in design that there are none. ~ Alan Turing

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

Can machines think?"... The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B... We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think? ~ Alan Turing

Finding such a person makes everyone else appear so ordinary ... and if anything happens to him, you've got nothing left but to return to the ordinary world, and a kind of isolation that never existed before. ~ Alan Turing

In attempting to construct such (artificially intelligent) machines we should not be irreverently usurping His (God's) power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children," Turing had advised. "Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates. ~ Alan Turing

Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic. ~ George Dyson

Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself. ~ Alan Turing

Among tech-minded kids, I think Alan Turing was a tremendous inspiration. He was a guy that was so different than the people around him. He was an outsider in his own time, but because he was an outsider is precisely why he was able to accomplish things nobody thought was possible. ~ Graham Moore

The brilliant British mathematician, eccentric, and computer pioneer Alan Turing came up with the following test: A computer can be said to be intelligent if it can (on average) fool a human into mistaking it for another human. The converse should be true. A human can be said to be unintelligent if we can replicate his speech by a computer, which we know is unintelligent, and fool a human into believing that it was written by a human. Can one produce a piece of work that can be largely mistaken for Derrida entirely randomly? ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider - to the disappointment of his very conventional parents, he no longer believed in God or religion.
(Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer) ~ Konrad Zuse

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

here's a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we're sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it's not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we? ~ Matt Harvey

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. ~ Alan Turing

There is, however, one feature that I would like to suggest should be incorporated in the machines, and that is a 'random element.' Each machine should be supplied with a tape bearing a random series of figures, e.g., 0 and 1 in equal quantities, and this series of figures should be used in the choices made by the machine. This would result in the behaviour of the machine not being by any means completely determined by the experiences to which it was subjected, and would have some valuable uses when one was experimenting with it. ~ Alan Turing

It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence. ~ Alan Turing

It would probably never have occurred to him that his own difficulties with the world were akin to those suffered by women-- as with the men's committee meetings held over his head, almost as if he were not there, and the way people took little notice of what he had said or written, but remained obsessed by details of manners or appearance. Women had to learn to compensate for these indignities by making a special effort, but Alan Turing made no such attempt. He expected the male world to work for him, and was baffled when it did not. ~ Andrew Hodges

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

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

I had been a lifelong Alan Turing obsessive. Among incredibly nerdy teenagers, without a lot of friends, Alan Turing was always this luminary figure we'd all look up to. ~ Graham Moore

Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace's objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can "inject" an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there
a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be "sub-critical," i.e. to correspond in this analogy to piles
of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are supercritical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole "theory" consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals' minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, "Can a machine be made to be super-critical? ~ Alan Turing

If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent. - Alan Turing ~ Stuart Firestein

I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven't the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out. ~ Alan Turing

If there was ever a candidate to be patron saint of computers then it would be Alan Turing. Mathematician, war hero and tragic victim of homophobia. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

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

I want a permanent relationship, and I might feel inclined to reject anything which of its nature could not be permanent. ~ Alan Turing

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. ~ Alan Turing

Alan Turing is so important to me and to the world, and his story is so important to be told, so it was a big thing to take up, and I was a little petrified. Like, who am I to write the Alan Turing story? He's one of the great geniuses of the 20th century - who was horribly persecuted for being gay - and I'm a kid from Chicago. ~ Graham Moore

Alan Turing, to me, always felt like an outsider's outsider. ~ Graham Moore

On 25 May 2011, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, speaking to the parliament of the United Kingdom, singled out Newton, Darwin and Alan Turing as British contributors to science. Celebrity is an imperfect measure of significance, and politicians do not confer scientific status, but Obama's choice signalled that public recognition of Alan Turing had attained a level very much higher than in 1983, when this book first appeared. ~ Andrew Hodges

The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact, never being influenced by any unproved conjecture, is quite mistaken. Provided it is made clear which are proved facts and which are conjectures, no harm can result. Conjectures are of great importance since they suggest useful lines of research. ~ Alan Turing

The works and customs of mankind do not seem to be very suitable material to which to apply scientific induction. ~ Alan Turing

I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard. ~ Alan Turing

I wrote about Alan Turing, the great mathematician and code-breaker. He was an absolutely different person, certainly more brilliant than I ever will be. ~ David Lagercrantz

The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. ~ Alan Turing

Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. ~ Alan Turing

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. ~ Alan Turing

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier.
Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do - and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there - all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war. ~ Larry Kramer

Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain. ~ Alan Turing

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

All roads lead to Johannesburg. ~ Alan Paton

For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free will, self nor other. There is simply one all-inclusive Happening, in which your personal sensation of being alive occurs in just the same way as the river flowing and the stars shining far out in space. There is no question of submitting or accepting or going with it, for what happens in and as you is no different from what happens as it. ~ Alan Watts

I started acting at the University of Michigan in my sophomore year. ~ David Alan Grier

When something sucks, it saps your energy and undermines the quality of your life. It makes you feel smaller and wish you hadn't participated. ~ Alan Cohen

The source of all light is in the eye. ~ Alan W. Watts

The apparent goal of the journey is simply the carrot the universe dangles before you to get you to learn the lessons the adventure yields. ~ Alan Cohen

Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then
simply ways of "figuring" the world which we agree to follow so that
we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers
and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no
agreement about measures of time and space, I would have no way of
making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth
Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4. ~ Alan W. Watts

If a flower had a God it would not be a transcendental flower but a field. ~ Alan Watts

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works. ~ Alan Perlis

Zola Budd: so small, so waif-like, you literally can't see her. But there she is ~ Alan Parry

Edinburgh is an experience
A city of enormous gifts
Whose streets sing of history
Whose cobbles tell tales. ~ Alan Bold

Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings?
I recall that so precisely because I've had time to consider my error. God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up.
I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death ... is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some choose to do harm to others. Others bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. ~ Alan Brennert

No man bears more responsibility for the present worldwide financial crisis and coming depression than Alan Greenspan. ~ Bill Bonner

I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time. ~ Alan Rickman

Faith is for sissies who daren't go and look for themselves. ~ Alan Moore

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis. ~ Alan Perlis

I'm a big proponent of having a mental health component go along with whatever the physical realities are. ~ Alan Thicke

Being scooped up by a huge, hairy, yellow hand was not as scary as Vieth might have imagined; being dumped on an unstable piece of wood held way high up, was. ~ Trevor Alan Foris

Time after time, they brought each other to new heights of ecstasy, until finally, they lay spent in each others arms in the quiet peace and contentment that only lovers know. ~ Alan Kinross

In loquaciousness lay insanity. ~ Alan Dean Foster

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel. ~ Alan Furst

We need, in effect, to make the phantom 'lock-boxes' around the trust fund real. ~ Alan Greenspan

Even the most foul of us likes to believe we have a saving grace. ~ Alan Bradley

I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II. ~ Alan Furst

I don't have deal breakers," Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

The only way you can handle big kinds of questions is to simply state briefly what the truth was. What am I going to tell you about the Holocaust? Would you like three pages about it? I don't think you would ... I don't think anything different than you think - it was horrible. ~ Alan Furst

When the American documentary filmmaker Donn Alan Pennebaker wanted to do a film on Dylan, Dylan asked him what he'd already done, and Pennebaker answered, Nothing except shots in the street. Dylan asked to see them, and he agreed to let him do the film. ~ Raymond Depardon

The Life of Pi' timelessly encapsulates an objectively true & real meme that God is Love and seeks out those He calls unto himself."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

Economists use the word consume to mean "utilize economic goods," but the Shorter Oxford Dictionary's definition is more appropriate to ecologists: "To make away with or destroy; to waste or to squander; to use up." The economies that cater to the global consumer society are responsible for the lion's share of the damage that humans have inflicted on common global resources. ~ Alan Thein Durning

When we talk today about receptiveness to stories, we tend to contrast that attitude to one governed by reason - we talk about freeing ourselves from the shackles of the rational mind and that sort of thing - but no belief was more central to Lewis's mind than the belief that it is eminently, fully rational to be responsive to the enchanting power of stories. ~ Alan Jacobs

The late Alan Gregg pointed out that human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled ... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago ... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical ... reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem. ~ Marston Bates

There is simply no problem of life; it is absolutely purposeless play; it doesn't have to continue; there is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, gestures gesturing. If there is any problem at all it is to find out how people come to think there is a problem, whatever made them imagine that life is serious. Basically there is the gesture. Time, space, multiplicity are all complications of it. Pain and suffering are very far-out forms of play, and there just isn't anything at all to be afraid of. There isn't any ego. The ego is a kind of flip, knowing that you know - like being afraid of being afraid. It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to things, a sort of double take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety. ~ Alan W. Watts

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. ~ Alan Collinge

The success of SYNC is another proof point that we are doing just that. We will continue to innovate and expand the capability of SYNC by integrating even more new technologies that fit our customers' lifestyles. ~ Alan Mulally

Car salespersons sell pieces of crap.
Politicians sell the whole turd.
Preachers sell the whole damn cistern! ~ Alan VanMeter

How would I be doing this differently if I were WILLING to let it be easy? ~ Alan Cohen

My job is to put words together and tell a story. If that doesn't work for you, it's not a war crime. ~ Alan Zweibel

Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific
state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success. ~ Alan Watts

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about. ~ Alan King

I'm a geeky actor, in the way that I like the craft of acting. ~ Alan Tudyk

First is first. That's the way I was brought up. Second or third are nowhere. ~ Alan Shearer

Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart. ~ Alan Watts

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. ~ Alan W. Watts

Struggle is not an act; it is an attitude. If we believe that we must fight to get what we want, we will toil over everything we do. If we recognize, however, that the universe works more efficiently for us when we approach it with ease, life will serve us in miraculous ways. ~ Alan Cohen

We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place. Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale ... Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this, culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister? ~ Alan Bennett

You're in for it this time,' she said. 'Father's been looking for you all afternoon, He's just got off the telephone with Constable Linnet, in the village. I must say he seemed rather dissapointed to hear that they hadn't fished your soggy little corpse out of the duck pond. ~ Alan Bradley

We're ruthless bastards and we always play dirty. ~ James Alan Gardner

Her yelling continues until I answer the door to find her on her knees shouting through the letterbox, like a gynaecologist bellowing into a woman. ~ Alan Partridge