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Alan Turing Quotes

Total quotes: 22
“Hardest time to lie to somebody is when they're expecting to be lied to.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: lying
“When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean. [pause] They say something else and you're expected to just know what they mean.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: say what you mean
“Advice about keeping secrets: it's a lot easier if you don't know them in the first place.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Secrets
“Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes... hollow.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Violence, Satisfying, Hollow, Satisfaction, humans
“Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes... hollow.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Violence, Satisfaction, Hollow
“I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Against Theology, No Religion
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Future, Planning, What Needs To Be Done
“May not machines carry out something which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a man does?”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Computers vs. Man, Can Computers Think?, Thinking Machines, Computation
“Presumably the child-brain is something like a notebook as one buys it from the stationer's. Rather little mechanism, and lots of blank sheets.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Blank Slate, Human Nature, Writing Nurture Into Nature
“We are not asking whether all digital computers would do well in the game nor whether the computers at present available would do well, but whether there are imaginable computers which would do well.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Computing
“We do not wish to penalise the machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions, nor to penalise a man for losing in a race against an aeroplane. The conditions of our game make these disabilities irrelevant.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Computing, computers
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: broken clock
“Was I God? No. Because God didn't win the war. We did.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: God, War
“Think of it. A digital computer. Electrical brain.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: digital computer, electrical brain
“Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.”
— Alan Turing, COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE
Tagged: computer, AI, Machine Learning
“Are you paying attention? Good. If you are not listening carefully, you will miss things. Important things. I will not pause, I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. You think that because you're sitting where you are, and I am sitting where I am, that you are in control of what is about to happen. You're mistaken. I am in control, because I know things that you do not know.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Paying Attention, Listening
“Alan Turing: I like solving problems, Commander. And Enigma is the most difficult problem in the world.

Commander Denniston: Enigma isn't difficult, it's impossible. The Americans, the Russians, the French, the Germans, everyone thinks Enigma is unbreakable.

Alan Turing: Good. Let me try and we'll know for sure, won't we?”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Enigma, Americans, russians, french, Germans
“Suppose Mother wants Tommy to call at the cobbler's every morning on his way to school to see if her shoes are done, she can ask him afresh every morning. Alternatively she can stick up a notice once and for all in the hall which he will see when he leaves for school and which tells him to call for the shoes, and also to destroy the notice when he comes back if he has the shoes with him.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Efficiency, Computing, computers, Making Things Work, Thought Experiments
“Of course machines can't think as people do. A machine is different from a person. Hence, they think differently. The interesting question is, just because something, uh... thinks differently from you, does that mean it's not thinking? Well, we allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries, I hate ice-skating, you cry at sad films, I am allergic to pollen. What is the point of... different tastes, different... preferences, if not, to say that our brains work differently, that we think differently? And if we can say that about one another, then why can't we say the same thing for brains... built of copper and wire, steel?”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Machines, Thinking, pollen, allergy, ice-skating
“Joan Clarke: Alan, what's happened?

Alan Turing: [pause] We can't be engaged anymore. Your parents need to take you back. Find you a husband elsewhere.

Joan Clarke: What's wrong with you?

Alan Turing: I have something to tell you. I'm... I'm a homosexual.

Joan Clarke: All right.

Alan Turing: No, no, men, Joan. Not women.

Joan Clarke: So what?

Alan Turing: I just told you...

Joan Clarke: So what? I had my suspicions. I always did. But we're not like other people. We love each other in our own way, and we can have the life together that we want. You won't be the perfect husband? I can promise you I harbored no intention of being the perfect wife. I'll not be fixing your lamb all day, while you come home from the office, will I? I'll work. You'll work. And we'll have each other's company. We'll have each other's minds. Sounds like a better marriage than most. Because I care for you. And you care for me. And we understand one another more than anyone else ever has.”
— Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
Tagged: Homosexual, Coming out, Homophobia, True Love
“The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances, but one too easily forgets that it is false. A natural consequence of doing so is that one then assumes that there is no virtue in the mere working out of consequences from data and general principles.”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: Can Computers Think?, Can Computers Surprise Us?
“A digital computer can usually be regarded as consisting of three parts: (i) Store. (ii) Executive unit. (iii) Control. ...The executive unit is the part which carries out the various individual operations involved in a calculation. ...It is the duty of the control to see that...[the table of] instructions are obeyed correctly and in the right order. ...A typical instruction might say—"Add the number stored in position 6809 to that in 4302 and put the result back into the latter storage position." Needless to say it would not occur in the machine expressed in English. It would more likely be coded in a form such as 6809430217. Here 17 says which of various possible operations [add] is to be performed on the two numbers. ...It will be noticed that the instruction takes up 10 digits and so forms one packet of information...”
— Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Tagged: computers, Digital Computers
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