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Quotes from Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas Hofstadter

born 1945 United States

← All quotes by Douglas Hofstadter

8 quotes

The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

This type of paradox is quite characteristic of Zen. It is an attempt to "break the mind of logic".

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

No reference is truly direct—every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Reality includes creating every real connection and reference.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. … Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories … human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon—which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Douglas Hofstadter (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.