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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.

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

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More quotes by Douglas Hofstadter

Irrationality is the square root of all evil.

If the meanings of true and false were switched, this sentence wouldn't be false.

I Am a Strange Loop (2007)

In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect.

Metamagical Themas (1985)

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)

The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps.

Le Ton beau de Marot (1997)

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Attribution

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