Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
—Douglas R. Hofstadter
The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.
—Douglas R. Hofstadter
Topics: Audiences, Language
No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over … the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.
—Douglas R. Hofstadter
Topics: Zen
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
Sam Harris American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author
Daniel C. Dennett American Philosopher, Atheist
Steven Pinker Canadian Psychologist
Jacques Derrida French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
Stewart Brand American Writer
Carl Sagan American Astronomer
Hilary Putnam American Philosopher
Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
Stephen Jay Gould American Paleontologist