1. “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” – Alan Turing
2. “The original question, ‘Can machines think?’ I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.” – Alan Turing
3. “We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” – Alan Turing
4. “If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.” – Alan Turing
5. “When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first… Of course, to observe is not its real duty, we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed…Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious.” – Alan Turing
6. “It is not possible to produce a set of rules purporting to describe what a man should do in every conceivable set of circumstances.” – Alan Turing
7. “Finding such a person makes everyone else appear so ordinary…and if anything happens to him, you’ve got nothing left but to return to the ordinary world, and a kind of isolation that never existed before.” – Alan Turing
8. “It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence.” – Alan Turing
9. “Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.” – Alan Turing
10. “A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.” – Alan Turing
11. “I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.” – Alan Turing
12. “The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other men, whose techniques he absorbs during the first twenty years of his life. He may then perhaps do a little research of his own and make a very few discoveries which are passed on to other men. From this point of view the search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than by individuals.” – Alan Turing
13. “Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.” – Alan Turing
14. “The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.” – Alan Turing
15. “No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.” – Alan Turing
16. “Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child’s? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain.” – Alan Turing
17. “Codes are a puzzle. A game, just like any other game.” – Alan Turing
18. “Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.” – Alan Turing
19. “Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.” – Alan Turing
20. “We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.” – Alan Turing
21. “One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, “My little computer said such a funny thing this morning”.” – Alan Turing
22. “We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields.” – Alan Turing
23. “Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books.” – Alan Turing
24. “Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.” – Alan Turing
25. “A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.” – Alan Turing
26. “A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained.” – Alan Turing
27. “Unless in communicating with it one says exactly what one means, trouble is bound to result.” – Alan Turing