Top 8 Quotes by Claude Shannon

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

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

Time, Past, May

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

Claude Shannon

Communication, Fundamentals, Messages

Claude Elwood Shannon, Warren Weaver (1962). “The mathematical theory of communication”

Information is the #resolution of uncertainty.

Claude Shannon

Information, Resolution, Uncertainty

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

Claude Shannon

Dog, Robots, Machines

Omni Magazine, 1987.

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?

Claude Shannon

Interesting, Problem, Elegance

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.'

Claude Shannon

Names, Ideas, Two

"Scientific American", Vol. 225, (p. 180), 1971.