In all important respects, the man who has nothing but his physical power to sell has nothing to sell which it is worth anyone's money to buy

The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with information.

the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine

Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.

I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'

What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.

Our tissues change as we live: the food we eat and the air we breathe become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and the momentary elements of our flesh and bone pass out of our body every day with our excreta. We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves