"I do not pretend to understand how gears and levers can bring forth consciousness, sir, but it certainly appears that somehow they have."

David D. Levine Science See all quotes by David D. Levine →

React to this quote

More by David D. Levine

“Though you sometimes strike me as incapable of improvement, I feel honor-bound to make the attempt.”

““Flog me if you wish,” she said, though her trembling hands belied her brave words. “It will not change the fact that you were wrong, and I was right!”

“The man could be frightfully keen...except when he was utterly obtuse.”

““And there you see the risk of automata,” Fox replied. “They are all well and good as amusements, I grant you. But when they are built to perform the work of men, surely this must result in the atrophy of the mental processes they replace.”

“That they cannot see beyond that limited horizon is the fault of society.”

“Wordlessly she gestured downward, to the hidden lower limbs which seemed to hold some unearthly power over men’s minds.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Of writing that is filled with mechanical and grammatical error, as compared with writing that conforms to the rules of standard edited English. Surely, we do not want to say that there is a necessary…"

— Neil Postman

Literature1931–2003

#knowledge

"People could no longer learn hacking the way I did, by starting to work on a real operating system, making real improvements. In fact, in the 1980s I often came across newly graduated computer science…"

— Richard Stallman

Technology1953

#knowledge

"I try to point out to them there's less chance of your becoming just illustrative when you become involved with the plastic elements of painting. So in short this is how I try to adapt it to teaching.…"

— Jacob Lawrence

Art1917–2000

#knowledge

"I think that my strength as a villain is that the people watching me know that Chris knows that he's in a movie. He's playing. He's having fun. He's going bang, bang. You know, "What's that?"

— Christopher Walken

Entertainment1943

#knowledge