Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Claude Shannon

Information is the resolution of uncertainty.

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines.

Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability.

I just wondered how things were put together.

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

I am very seldom interested in applications. I am more interested in the elegance of a problem. Is it a good problem, an interesting problem?

Use the word 'cybernetics', Norbert, because nobody knows what it means. This will always put you at an advantage in arguments.

We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it.

Cousins are part of your life so stick with cuz, not friends.

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.

Information is the #resolution of uncertainty.