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If intellectual power is to be developed, we must somehow construct amplifiers for intelligence — devices that, supplied with a little intelligence, will emit a lot.

— W. Ross Ashby

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Intelligence

More quotes by W. Ross Ashby

Further, as every law of nature implies the existence of an invariant, it follows that every law of nature is a constraint.

An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)

Cybernetics treats not things but ways of behaving.

An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)

The concept of "variety" [is] inseparable from that of "information."

An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)

When a constraint exists advantage can usually be taken of it.

An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)

Such a system is “self-organizing” in the sense that it changes from “parts separated” to “parts joined.”

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: W. Ross Ashby (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.