Alan Turing

"The human intellect is invincible except against itself."

"Let us not worry about the semantics, how we should talk; let us not worry about the syntax, the form of the words and their arrangement; but let us worry about what we mean."

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty that needs to be done."

"The beauty of mathematics lies in the most unexpected and hidden places."

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."

"If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent."

"The effect of the 'Machines in the Gulag' revelation could not be over-estimated in the consciousness of our civilisation."

"What we need is machinery for doing sums, not a vast amount of complicated apparatus."

"All the evidence we have suggests that it is the influence of the culture that is the major factor in determing the way a person develops."

"We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge."

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

"Turing machines are not the fastest computers, but they are the most general."

"It is a fair question whether this sense data, unscrambled, still amounts to a thinking process."

"I am not very impressed by theological arguments whatever they may be used to support."

"The criticism that 'a machine cannot do X' often arises from the inability of the critic to envisage the nature of X."

"In every case the machines have the disadvantage of extreme slowness."

"We do not need to program a machine to behave like a mature human being; we need only program it to behave like a child."

"One can speculate that if the machine thinks, it must have thoughts; i.e., it must have something analogous to ideas."

"The digital computer is a universal machine in the sense that it can be adapted to do the work of any other machine."

"The science of statistics is not just a numerical science, it is a philosophical science."

"I would say that for a very wide range of initial conditions, if the machine is provided with an appropriate program, it will do a very good imitation."

"We cannot make machines that are like men and have feelings, but we can make machines that behave as if they had feelings."

"It might be argued that there is a fundamental contradiction in the idea of a 'thinking machine.'"

"The highest praise a machine can receive is to be deemed capable of thought."

"What is the most general kind of machine one can construct?"

"The problem of creating a machine that thinks involves more fundamental difficulties."

"Digital machines can be devised to produce a steady stream of appropriate answers."

"In contrast to digital machines, analog machines have a tendency toward inaccuracy."

"If we can explain all of human behaviour in terms of mechanics, then we have made the first step."

"The notion that machines cannot have thoughts is a confusion about language and meaning."