# Quote — Norbert Wiener, The Human Use Of Human Beings

> What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.

- Author: [Norbert Wiener](https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener.md)
- Book: [The Human Use Of Human Beings](https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings.md)
- Page: 135
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener#The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings_(1950)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings/what-sometimes-enrages

## More from this book

> It is my thesis that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback. Both of them have sensory receptors as one stage in their cycle of operation: that is, in both of them there exists a special apparatus for collecting information from the outer world at low energy levels, and for making it available in the operation of the individual or of the machine. In both cases these external messages are not taken neat, but through the internal transforming powers of the apparatus, whether it be alive or dead. The information is then turned into a new form available for the further stages of performance. In both the animal and the machine this performance is made to be effective on the outer world. In both of them, their performed action on the outer world, and not merely their intended action, is reported back to the central regulatory apparatus. This complex of behavior is ignored by the average man, and in particular does not play the role that it should in our habitual analysis of society; for just as individual physical responses may be seen from this point of view, so may the organic responses of society itself. I do not mean that the sociologist is unaware of the existence and complex nature of communications in society, but until recently he has tended to overlook the extent to which they are the cement which binds its fabric together.

p. 26 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings/it-is-my-thesis.md)

> That country will have the greatest security whose informational and scientific situation is adequate to meet the demands that may be put on it—the country in which it is fully realized that information is important as a stage in the continuous process by which we observe the outer world, and act effectively upon it. In other words, no amount of scientific research, carefully recorded in books and papers, and then put into our libraries with labels of secrecy, will be adequate to protect us for any length of time in a world where the effective level of information is perpetually advancing.

p. 121 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings/that-country-will.md)

> What many of us fail to realize is that the last four hundred years are a highly special period in the history of the world. The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the results of increased communication, but also of an increased mastery over nature, which on a limited planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be an increased slavery to nature. For the more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.

p. 46 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings/what-many-of-us-fail.md)