Mit Quotes - Page 2

Two factors explain our success. One, MIT's renaissance after World War II as a federally supported research resource. Two, the mathematical revolution in macro- and micro-economic theory and statistics. This was overdue and inevitable, MIT was the logical place for it to flourish.

Paul Samuelson

War, Two, Research

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I thought of killing myself but soon decided that I could always try MIT and then kill myself later if it was that bad but that I couldn't commit suicide and then try MIT afterwards. The two operations, suicide and going to MIT, don't commute.

Murray Gell-Mann

Suicide, Two, Trying

"The Making of a Physicist". Edge.org Video interview, www.edge.org. June 30, 2003.

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Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel. War is merely the continuation of policy with the admixture of other means.

Carl von Clausewitz

War, Mean, Als

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There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.

William Poundstone

Bells, Labs, Unfair

William Poundstone (2010). “Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street”, p.15, Macmillan

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I was at a speaking engagement for MIT... and I said, 'The Professor has all sorts of degrees, including one from this very institution [MIT]! And that's why I can make a radio out of a coconut, and not fix a hole in a boat!'

Russell Johnson

Engagement, Coconuts, Radio

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You think the weather is weird now? Just wait. A new MIT study, just published in a peer-reviewed journal, projects that the Earth could see warming of more than 9 degrees F by 2100 - more than twice earlier projections.

Jeff Goodell

Thinking, Weather, Waiting

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It struck me that Steve Jobs, known to be such a brilliant speaker, had a very difficult time explaining things when he was younger. He was describing technology that didn't exist. He had MIT engineers, and he was trying to tell them what he wanted; but there were no terms for what he wanted yet. I think a lot of his early frustration was trying to quickly get his vision to the finish line.

Joshua Michael Stern

Jobs, Frustration, Technology

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I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.

Alan Lightman

Art, Thinking, Engineering

Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

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Yet another video has emerged of MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber calling Americans 'stupid,' and bragging about how the Affordable Care Act's drafters had to deceive the public in order to pass the law.

Alexander Viets Griswold

Stupid, Law, Obamacare

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Odds are you’re going to like this lively spin on the true story of six MIT mathletes who broke the Vegas Bank. It’s a kick to watch Kevin Spacey and a gifted young cast use smarts to deal audiences a winning hand.

Peter Travers

Smart, Winning, Vegas

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I studied engineering at MIT. There, the late, great physicist Philip Morrison introduced me to the idea that, in any system, there exists the inevitability that an event will occur which is completely unrelated to anything that preceded it. It completely changed my perception of "impossible."

Tohoru Masamune

Engineering, Ideas, Perception

"Tohoru Masamune: Pursuing Dreams and Embracing Chaos". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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In my first career I had founded my own company, with a group of MIT professors, before coming to Harvard to finish my doctorate, and so I had a deep respect for the brains, talent, and dedication of managers. That made it hard for me to believe the attributions in the business press that stupid management was to blame. So I looked elsewhere for an explanation.

Clayton Christensen

Stupid, Believe, Dedication

Source: www.strategy-business.com

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In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT's Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

Noam Chomsky

Daughter, Military, War

"Peace netter". Interviewed with Hamish Mackintosh, www.theguardian.com. October 16, 2002.

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I thought that perhaps the most creative mix for a society would be nine parts solid worker from institutions like MIT to one part poet from Marrakech, but in spite of the fact that I myself had been trained to be one of the solid workers, which meant that all of my sympathies lay with that group, I would not surrender the poet. The problem was to find him.

James A. Michener

Creative, Groups, Would Be

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Mea culpa, mea culpa. MIT and Wharton and University of Chicago created the financial engineering instruments, which, like Samson and Delilah, blinded every CEO. They didn't realize the kind of leverage they were doing and they didn't understand when they were really creating a real profit or a fictitious one.

Paul Samuelson

Real, Engineering, Creating

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[In geology,] As in history, the material in hand remains silent if no questions are asked. The nature of these questions depends on the "school" to which the geologist belongs and on the objectivity of his investigations. Hans Cloos called this way of interrogation "the dialogue with the earth," "das Gesprach mit der Erde."

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

School, Science, Objectivity

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My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.

Michael J. Massimino

School, Space, Working Together

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I've had young women come to me and say that before they watched 'Voyager' it didn't really occur to them that they could be successful in a higher position in the field of science; girls going to MIT, girls pursuing astrophysics with a view to a career in NASA.

Kate Mulgrew

Girl, Successful, Views

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In 1980, during my sophomore year at MIT, I realized that the school didn't have a student space organization. I made posters for a group I called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and put them up all over campus. Thirty-five people showed up. It was the first thing I ever organized, and it took off!

Peter Diamandis

School, Years, Organization

"X Prize Founder Peter Diamandis Has His Eyes on the Future". Interview with Ted Greenwald, www.wired.com. June 22, 2012.

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A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness—not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”

Richard Stallman

Mean, Community, Computer

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing, www.gnu.org. 1996.

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Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, they can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't.

Philip Greenspun

Thinking, Principles, Three

Philip Greenspun (1999). “Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing”, p.202, Morgan Kaufmann

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Where you live matters: there’s only one MIT. And there's only one Hollywood and only one Silicon Valley. This isn't a coincidence: for whatever you're doing, there's usually only one place where the top people go. You should go there. Don’t settle for anywhere else. Meeting my heroes and learning from them gave me a huge advantage. Your heroes are part of your circle too - follow them.

Drew Houston

Inspirational, Hero, Circles

Drew Houston's Commencement Address at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, news.mit.edu. June 7, 2013.

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I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?

Buzz Aldrin

Air, Knowing, Space

"Buzz Aldrin Reflects on Moon Landing". "Hannity" with Sean Hannity, www.foxnews.com. June 29, 2009.

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Don’t ask me when because I don’t remember, but somewhere along the way I keep forgetting to commit suicide.

Chuck Palahniuk

Way, Causes, Ask Me

Chuck Palahniuk (1999). “Survivor: A Novel”, Anchor

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Students teach all sorts of things but most importantly they make explicit the courage that it takes to be a learner, the courage it takes to open yourself to the transformative power of real learning and that courage I am exposed to almost every day at MIT and that I'm deeply grateful for.

Junot Diaz

Real, Grateful, Students

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