Douglas Hofstadter - Formal Quotes

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Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths.

Douglas Hofstadter

To confront the apparent contradiction head-on, to savor it, to turn it over, to take it apart, to wallow in it, so that in the end the reader may gain new insights into the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the formal and the informal, the animate and the inanimate, the flexible and the inflexible.

Douglas Hofstadter