Busy Beaver/%cf%83 Complexity and Unprovability

Famous quotes containing the words busy, beaver and/or complexity:

    But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal.... No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
    Zora Neale Hurston (1907–1960)

    The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europe has endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form ...
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)