The social sciences, I thought, needed the same kind of rigor and the same mathematical underpinnings that had made the 'hard' sciences so brilliantly successful.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

One finds limits by pushing them.

Learning results from what the student does and thinks, and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing the student to learn.

Solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent.

Enlightenments, like accidents, happen only to prepared minds.

The proper study of mankind is the science of design.

Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.

The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function.

Human beings know a lot of things, some of which are true, and apply them. When we like the results, we call it wisdom.

Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognise surprising and unusual phenomena.

If you manage to live long enough, most of your greatest fears become fond memories to look back on.

Facing your fears robs them of their power.

Children and babies should be held in the most sacred regard. We feel that they're the most natural and true magicians.

I'm not much of a family man. I'm just not that into it. I love kids, I adore them, but I don't want to live my life for them.

All the food that is put into the stomach that the system cannot derive benefit from, is a burden to nature in her work.

If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.

When your eyes go, and your legs go, and your fans go; then it's time for you to go too.

Execute their airy purposes.

The aim of my life is the overthrow of monarchy.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feelings as to sight?