“Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level”
Source: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979), Chapter 20: "Strange Loops Or Tangled Heirarchies"
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Douglas Hofstadter 17
American professor of cognitive science 1945Related quotes
“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
Source: The Peter Principle (1969), p. 25: Statement of the Peter Principle
1950s, General Systems Theory - The Skeleton of Science, 1956
Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 16

“Trust your hunches… Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”
As quoted in Words of Wisdom : More Good Advice (1990) edited by William Safire and Leonard Safir, p. 199
Variant: Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
Trust your hunches. Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. But be warned, don't confuse hunches with wishful thinking.
Context: Trust your hunches... Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. Warning! Do not confuse your hunches with wishful thinking. This is the road to disaster.

Ch LXXIII.
Magick Without Tears (1954)
Context: As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

“Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”
Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 35

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 11, “Viriditas” (p. 483)