Claude Shannon

I'm not interested in the meaning of the message, only in its efficient transmission.

The more information you have, the less you know.

I've often wondered if the human brain is just a very complicated Turing machine.

The problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Any system that is not designed to be secure will be insecure.

My work is not about understanding, but about measuring.

Noise is a fact of life, and a fact of communication.

The capacity of a communication channel is like the capacity of a pipe. You can't put more water through it than it can hold.

I'm a tinkerer. I like to build things.

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

The most important thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I know it will be digital.

The difference between a good engineer and a bad engineer is that a good engineer knows when to stop.

My goal was to find the fundamental limits of communication, not to build a better telephone.

The more you try to control information, the more it will try to escape.

I never set out to invent information theory. I just wanted to understand how communication works.

The beauty of mathematics is that it allows you to be precise about imprecise things.

A good theory should be simple enough to be understood, but complex enough to be useful.

The future of communication is not about more bandwidth, but about more intelligence.

I'm not a philosopher, I'm an engineer.