“What we need now is the description of the “describer” or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer.”

— Heinz von Foerster

Source: 1980s, Notes on an epistemology for living things, 1981, p.258

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Heinz von Foerster 11

Austrian American scientist and cybernetician 1911–2002

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

“God has promised to supply our needs. What we don’t have now we don’t need now.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: The Path of Loneliness: Finding Your Way Through the Wilderness to God

“It’s said that actions speak louder than words,” he went on, “but we still need words. We need to speak and we need to be heard.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: One with You

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Context: We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are seaching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.