Busy Beaver/%cf%83 Complexity and Unprovability

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

    A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
    Will he not let us alone,
    And think that there a loving couple lies
    Who thought that this device might be some way
    To make their souls, at the last busy day,
    Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?
    John Donne (1572–1631)

    This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.
    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)