Claude Shannon

“Information is the resolution of uncertainty.”

“These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.”

“The letters in a text are not chosen independently. For example, q is virtually always followed by u.”

“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.”

“The choice of a logarithmic base corresponds to the choice of a unit for measuring information. If the base 2 is used the resulting units may be called binary digits, or more briefly bits.”

“My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information theory', but the word 'information' was too loaded, so I decided to call it 'communication theory'.”

“The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages.”

“Can we define a quantity that will measure, in some sense, how much information is 'produced' by such a process, or better, at what rate information is produced?”

“I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.”

“I am very seldom interested in applications. I am more interested in the elegance of a problem.”

“This is a theory of information, not a theory of meaning.”

“I have spent lots of time on totally useless things.”