Hard sciences are successful because they deal with the soft problems; soft sciences are struggling because they deal with the hard problems.

First-order cybernetics is the science of observed systems; Second-order cybernetics is the science of observing systems.

Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.

If you desire to see, learn how to act.

Act always so as to increase the number of choices

Objectivity is a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him.

What we need now is the description of the "describer" or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer.

Cybernetics is NOT the banana.

Something that cannot be explained cannot be seen.

The environment as we perceive it is our invention.

Should one name one central concept, a first principle, of cybernetics, it would be circularity.

to avoid being blamed after here, do what you must do as a must do whilst you are here!

I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens

Kids won't watch older movies - they want to see what's hip right now.

And the very fact of how you speak somehow influences who you are. The way you move, the way you think, it seeps into your being, and it's quite hard to really break that down entirely.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

I like anchovies, and I don't tell everybody about them. Almost every time, they don't even notice.

Any writer knows he has to pay for his compliments. As soon as he has said, Why, thank you, that's very generous of you, the other person clears his throat and dives into his own writing experiences.

I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.

Choose a self and stand by it.