“If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.”

—  Jerry Fodor

Fodor (1998) " The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/jerry-fodor/the-trouble-with-psychological-darwinism" London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 2, 22 January 1998, pp.11-13

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God…" by Jerry Fodor?
Jerry Fodor photo
Jerry Fodor11
American philosopher 1935–2017

Related quotes

Wendell Berry photo

“We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Think Little".
A Continuous Harmony (1972)

Margaret Thatcher photo

“The press was full of outraged criticism of the community charge from Conservative supporters. What hurt me was that the very people who had always looked to me for protection from exploitation by the socialist state were those who were suffering most. These were the people who were just above the level at which community charge benefit stopped but who were by no means well off and who had scrimped and saved to buy their homes.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 658

Stephen King photo

“My father had taught me - mostly by example - that if a man wanted to be in charge of his life, he had to be in charge of his problems.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

Ben Carson photo

“Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Neil Gaiman photo

“"So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him.”

Neil Gaiman book Good Omens

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (1990) -->

Orson Scott Card photo

“Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 18.

Brandon Mull photo

“I was vanquished by a deer!'
A giant magical flying deer with fangs,' Seth said, parroting a description Gavin had shared earlier.
That sounds a little better,' Warren conceded. 'Seth is in charge of my tombstone.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

Omar Khayyám photo

“Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning?”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Khayyám measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days;
see Quotes about Khayyám below
Source: The Rubaiyat (1120)
Context: Nay
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Blithedale Romance

The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Context: What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in? It had satisfied me well enough. My pleasant bachelor-parlor, sunny and shadowy, curtained and carpeted, with the bedchamber adjoining... my evening at the billiard club, the concert, the theatre, or at somebody's party, if I pleased - what could be better than all this? Was it better to hoe, to mow, to toil and moil amidst the accumulations of a barnyard; to be the chambermaid of two yoke of oxen and a dozen cows; to eat salt beef, and earn it with the sweat of my brow, and thereby take the tough morsel out of some wretch's mouth, into whose vocation I had thrust myself?

“He could not live again in Paris. It had seemed better then only because he had been younger, and had not yet known contentment.”

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XIX (p. 341)

Related topics