Quotes by Alan Turing

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradi...”

“The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other men, whose techniques he absorbs during the first twenty years of his lif...”

“Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelaces objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can inject an idea into the machine, and that it wi...”

“The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.”

“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.”

“I want a permanent relationship, and I might feel inclined to reject anything which of its nature could not be permanent.”

“I have had a dream indicating rather clearly that I am on the way to being hetero, though I don't accept it with much enthusiasm either awake or in the dreams.”

“Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can “inject” an idea into the machine, and that it...”

“Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in ...”

“Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for a...”

“A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.”

“There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the i...”

“This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years b...”

“The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely.”

“Let us now assume, for the sake of argument, that these machines are a genuine possibility, and look at the consequences of constructing them. To do so would of course meet with great opposition, u...”

“The computable numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by finite means. ...According to my definition, a number is computable if its decim...”

“We may compare a man in the process of computing a real number to a machine which is only capable of a finite number of conditions q1, q2, ..., qK which will be called m-configurations .”

“The machine is supplied with a tape (the analogue of paper) running through it, and divided into sections (called squares) each capable of bearing a symbol.”

“The scanned symbol is the only one of which the machine is... directly aware. However, by altering its m-configuration the machine can effectively remember some of the symbols which it has seen (sc...”