Quotes from Herbert A. Simon

People have to be motivated to contribute to the society, to produce. At the same time, they have to be protected if they are unable to take care of themselves. If the first is more important you're a Republican the second Democrat.

An artifact can be thought of as a meeting point—an "interface" in today's terms—between an "inner" environment, the substance and organization of the artifact itself, and an "outer" environment, the surroundings in which it operates. If the inner environment is appropriate to the outer environment, or vice versa, the artifact will serve its intended purpose.

We have adopted the policy of Sorel of propaganda of the deed. The best rhetoric comes from building and testing models and running experiments. Let philosophers weave webs of words; such webs break easily.

I resolved to major in economics, until I learned that it required an accounting course. I switched to political science, which had no such requirement. (A strange beginning for someone who was later to be a founding father of a business school and a Nobel Laureate in economics.)

I think those who object to my characterizing man as simple want somehow to retain a deep mystery at his core.

Time and again, we have found the 'idle' truths arrived at through the process of inquiry to be of the greatest moment for practical human affairs.

In arguing that machines think, we are in the same fix as Darwin when he argued that man shares common ancestors with monkeys, or Galileo when he argued that the Earth spins on its axis.

I tried to develop some theories that took account of the uncertainty in the world and the complexity in the world.

My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into the fields of political science, economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and philosophy of science, among others.

To deal with these problems - of world population and hunger, of peace, of energy and mineral resources, of environmental pollution, of poverty - we must broaden and deepen our knowledge of nature's laws, and we must broaden and deepen our understanding of the laws of human behavior.

My home nurtured in me an early attachment to books and other things of the intellect, to music, and to the out of doors.

You can love two or more women at once... but you cannot be loyal to more than one.

Maybe we ought to have a world in which things are divided between people kind of fairly.

In essence our failure was a vivid demonstration, which I have never forgotten, that theories, however plausible and "obviously" valid, can be destroyed totally by the obstinate facts of the real world. Davis had brought us an unbeatable scheme for raising cattle profitably. The cattle had a different scheme. No doubt my later deep skepticism of the a priorism of mainstream economics had some of its origins in this experience.

When I examine my experimental research, I find to my embarrassment I rarely provided a control condition. What could I have possibly learned from these ill-designed experiments? The answer (it surprised me) is that you can test theoretical models without a control condition.

I had almost no background for the work in computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychology...Interdisciplinary adventure is easiest in new fields.

How does one instill curiosity? Without it this 'educational' process is a continual struggle between a student who is trying to get by and a teacher who is trying to catch him at it, neither profiting.

title of many of his books and ultimately his autobiography: Models of Man (1957), Models of Discovery (1977), Models of Thought (1979 and 1989), Models of Bounded Rationality (1982), and Models of My Life (1991).

Students don't learn by being lectured at; then learn by thinking hard, solving problems and dissecting proofs.

Students are prepared to tolerate any other form of incompetence in an instructor, but not hostility.

People have to be motivated to contribute to the society, to produce. At the same time, they have to be protected if they are unable to take care of themselves. If the first is more important you're roughly a Republican the second Democrat.

Only people who believe deeply and almost fanatically in a dream can struggle so hard with inner doubt and conflict, and without losing, in the presence of frequent disagreement on particulars, a deep sense of purpose and mutual respect.

Though our vocabularies were different, we both view the human mind as a symbol-manipulating (my term) or information processing (Al Newell) system.

I was transformed...because I caught a glimpse of a revolutionary use for computers. We seized the opportunity to the computer as a general processor for symbols (hence thoughts) rather than just a speedy engine for arithmetic.