Von Foerster Quotes

#1. I shall act always so as to increase the total number of choices.

Heinz Von Foerster

#2. All the ports are hidden in every port because through one port you can reach all the ports! Anywhere is actually everywhere because there is a hidden door in anywhere opening to everywhere!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#3. Hard sciences are successful because they deal with the soft problems; soft sciences are struggling because they deal with the hard problems.

Heinz Von Foerster

#4. Cybernetics is NOT the banana.

Heinz Von Foerster

#5. Objectivity is a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him

Heinz Von Foerster

#6. Act always so as to increase the number of choices

Heinz Von Foerster

#7. Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.

Plutarch

#8. Should one name one central concept, a first principle, of cybernetics, it would be circularity.

Heinz Von Foerster

#9. Either Stone Age man was a technological wizard, who carefully removed his technological achievements so as not to upset his inferior progeny, or our population dwindled from a once astronomical size to the mere three billions of today.

Heinz Von Foerster

#10. Everything that is said is said by an observer.

Heinz Von Foerster

#11. The environment as we perceive it is our invention,

Heinz Von Foerster

#12. For me, love is an enhanced state of kindness, compassion, service, respect, and humility, an emotion I feel we are all here to give and to receive.

Nathan East

#13. What we need now is the description of the "describer" or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer.

Heinz Von Foerster

#14. Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.

Heinz Von Foerster

#15. If you desire to see, learn how to act.

Heinz Von Foerster

#16. First-order cybernetics is the science of observed systems; Second-order cybernetics is the science of observing systems.

Heinz Von Foerster

#17. What will I do with myself when I retire? When I quit my job, I do not want to quit living. Can I possibly be of use when retirement day comes, or will I just be taking up space?

John Anthony West

#18. My goal is, of course, for this show to do well, and I would love it if people liked it.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

#19. In America idea of freedom isn't actually about freedom. That's about power. The point of an artist is to find out what are the flavors that I must work with. Finding one's freedom is about surrendering to your helplessness.

Chris Martin

#20. And now it looks like I'm probably going to shoot a movie that I wrote. I got the money to do it, and I would star and all, because of being on Howard.

Artie Lange

#21. Intimacy transcends the physical. It is a feeling of closeness that isn't about proximity, but of belonging. It is a beautiful emotional space in which two become one.

Steve Maraboli

#22. It's also reflective of a young person's religion or faith in that it's highly charged with sacramental imagery and with country imagery, because I was in the seminary for so many years in the country.

Daniel Berrigan

#23. Something that cannot be explained cannot be seen.

Heinz Von Foerster