Herbert A. Simon

Viewed as a geometric figure, the ant's path is irregular, complex, and hard to describe.

— Herbert A. Simon

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

— Herbert A. Simon

The classical theory of omniscient rationality is strikingly simple and beautiful.

— Herbert A. Simon

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

— Herbert A. Simon

Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.

— Herbert A. Simon

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

— Herbert A. Simon

I like to think that since I was about 19, I have studied human decision-making and problem-solving.

— Herbert A. Simon

The density of settlement of economists over the whole empire of economic science is very uneven, with a few areas of modest…

— Herbert A. Simon

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 15, 1916. My father, an electrical engineer, had come to the United States in…

— Herbert A. Simon

My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into…

— Herbert A. Simon

I started off thinking that maybe the social sciences ought to have the kinds of mathematics that the natural sciences had. That…

— Herbert A. Simon

In arguing that machines think, we are in the same fix as Darwin when he argued that man shares common ancestors with…

— Herbert A. Simon

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information…

— Herbert A. Simon

Like Humpty Dumpty, we can make words mean anything we want them to mean.

— Herbert A. Simon

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

— Herbert A. Simon

The choices we make lead up to actual experiences. It is one thing to decide to climb a mountain. It is quite…

— Herbert A. Simon

The Nobel prizes memorialize Alfred Nobel's faith in the contribution that human thought, directed to science and art, can make to human…

— Herbert A. Simon

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

— Herbert A. Simon

To deal with these problems - of world population and hunger, of peace, of energy and mineral resources, of environmental pollution, of…

— Herbert A. Simon

I realized that you could formulate theories about human and social phenomena in language and pictures and whatever you wanted on the…

— Herbert A. Simon

Whereas economic man maximises, selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices, looks for…

— Herbert A. Simon

When computers came along, I felt for the first time that I had the proper tools for the kind of theoretical work…

— Herbert A. Simon

Time and again, we have found the 'idle' truths arrived at through the process of inquiry to be of the greatest moment…

— Herbert A. Simon

“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…

— Herbert A. Simon

By a combination of formal training and self study, the latter continuing systematically well into the 1940s, I was able to gain…

— Herbert A. Simon

“It is true that humanity is faced with many problems. It always has been but perhaps not always with such keen awareness…

— Herbert A. Simon