This Monkey Sits Down at a Typewriter — Infinite Monkey Theorem Quotations
I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of William Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon. ~Bill Hoest (1926–1988)
I heard that if you locked William Shakespeare in a room with a typewriter for long enough he'd eventually write all the songs by The Monkees. ~Author unknown, found on the internet, 2007
Ten thousand monkeys typing for 10,000 years will give you a Hemingway, but you gotta get 'em drunk first. ~The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert, "Don't Mess with Jesus," 2006 June 21, www.cc.com
A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters will eventually write "Hamlet." A thousand cats at a thousand typewriters will tell you to go write your own damn "Hamlet." ~Doug Savage, Savage Chickens, cartoon, 2014, savagechickens.com
In a number of mathematics books, they made reference to something that either proves infinity or the law of probability. They claim that if you take an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters and you set them down and they just type away, that eventually given enough time they would type all the great books. Now, they're gonna type a lot of gibberish, but eventually they will type all the great books. If they ever tried this, they would have to hire guys to check the monkeys to see if they were turning out anything worthwhile... "Harry, hold on, Post 15 here has something!... 'To be or not to be, that is the gazornaanplatt.'" ~Bob Newhart, "An Infinite Number of Monkeys," The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, 1960
This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll have written the greatest novel known to man. Let's see. "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?" You stupid monkey! ~The Simpsons, "Last Exit to Springfield," 1993, written by Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky
If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. ~A. S. Eddington, "The Running-Down of the Universe," 1927
Huxley says that a half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum. Strictly speaking, one immortal monkey would be sufficient. ~Jorge Luis Borges, "La Biblioteca Total," 1939 [According to Eliot Weinberger, this essay was inspired by Borges' "dreary job at the municipal library" and later became the 1941 story "The Library of Babel." Borges traces the broad idea for the infinite monkey theorem all the way back to the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus.
They say that a monkey in the right frame of mind
Given enough paper and given enough time
Is bound to type Shakespeare eventually
Oh baby, don't give up on me...
~Timbuk3, "Don't Give Up On Me" (song), Edge of Allegiance, 1989, written by Pat MacDonald and Barbara K. MacDonald
Ford, there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out. ~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1978 [radio,
— Rob: Ever hear of the theory that if you give an infinite amount of monkeys typewriters, they will eventually type the works of Shakespeare?
— Bucky: Pff. Filthy plagiarists... I bet they'd chimp it all up, too. I, for one, don't want to read Bonobo and Juliet. Oranguthello? I don't think so... King Lemur? Now there's a tragedy...
~Darby Conley, Get Fuzzy, comic strip, 2007 December 23rd, gocomics.com/getfuzzy
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare. ~Blair Houghton, as quoted from "Assorted Nifty .Sigs Found In Usenet Newsgroups, Collected by Paul Wake," last updated 1996
Monkey at typewriter: "But how can I credibly delay Hamlet's revenge until Act V?" ~Ruben Bolling, "A Million Monkeys at a Million Typewriters," Tom the Dancing Bug's Super-Fun-Pak Comix, Tom the Dancing Bug, comic strip, 2008 July 12, tomthedancingbug.com
An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually define all that is Canada. ~MacLaren McCann advertising agency, Toronto, "I Am Canadian," Molson Canadian television commercial, 1998
Welcome to the six o'clock news, I'm your anchor, Wolverine St. Jack John. Our top story: an infinite amount of monkeys came up with the FOX fall lineup. ~Colin Mochrie, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, "Weird Newscasters," episode 108, 1998
Monkey Typewriter Theory: An immortal monkey pounding on a typewriter will eventually reproduce the text of 'Hamlet.'
Baby Keyboard Theory: Left alone, a baby pounding on a computer keyboard will eventually order 32 cases of bathroom caulk from an online retailer.
~Paul Trap, Thatababy, comic strip, 2014 February 13, gocomics.com/thatababy
We remember more, that language is not static, but that neologisms continually mark our progress not only in general ideas but in science. We use
HANK: Wait 'til they find out she's an idiot. That Atlantic poem was a total fluke.
TONY: It was one of those infinite monkey things?
HANK: Infinite monkey? No. Twenty monkeys. And they can take breaks. And they need one typewriter. They'll poop out that poem in ten minutes.
~Lucky Hank, "The Arrival," 2023, based on the 1997 novel Straight Man by Richard Russo, written for television by Jasmine Pierce
Suppose we have a very large number of monkeys, each banging away randomly on his or her own word processor... If we let them type indefinitely, would one of them at some point randomly type out Shakespeare's entire Hamlet? The answer is yes... Why? Because if we perform a random event enough times, we would expect to see any possible outcome, no matter how unlikely it may be. This result is known as the Infinite Monkey Theorem, or as we like to refer to it, Hamlet Happens. ~Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird, The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking, 2005 [Side note in that section of the textbook: "Don't be shocked if the improbable occurs from time to time."
I read in a newspaper that a certain Mrs. Winifred Venton, with the help of the Enfield College of Technology computer, has at last cracked the cipher of the Sonnets. The Message: Shakespeare was really King Edward VI, who did not die, as the history books say, when he was sixteen, but at the age of 125. In addition to writing "Shakespeare," he wrote not only all of the Ben Jonson and Bacon, but Don Quixote as well. ~W. H. Auden, "Shakespeare and the Computers," A Certain World: A Commonplace Book, 1970
For a Tragedy and a Comedy are both composed of the same alphabet. ~Aristotle (384–322 BCE), On Generation and Corruption, Book I, Part II
Must I not here express my wonder that any one should exist who persuades himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles carried along by their own impulse and weight, and that a universe so beautiful and so admirably arrayed is formed from the accidental concourse of those particles? I do not understand why the man who supposes that to have been possible should not also think that if a countless number of the forms of the one and twenty letters, whether in gold or any other material, were to be thrown somewhere, it would be possible, when they had been shaken out upon the ground, for the annals of Ennius to result from them so as to be able to be read consecutively, — a miracle of chance which I incline to think would be impossible even in the case of a single verse. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), On the Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter XXXVII, translated by Francis Brooks
How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea or so much as make a good discourse in prose?... How long might a man sprinkle colours upon canvas with a careless hand before they would make the exact picture of a man... How long might twenty thousand blind men, which should be sent out from the remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army? And yet this is much more easy to be imagined than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world. ~Thomas Reid, "First Principles of Necessary Truths," Essays on the Intellectual Powers of the Human Mind, 1785 [pretty sure this is how