Stanislaw Ulam Quotes

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• It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Change, Pieces, Paper

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• Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Fifty

  Stanislaw Marcin Ulam (1986). “Science, Computers, and People: From the Tree of Mathematics”

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• Knowing what is big and what is small is more important than being able to solve partial differential equations.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Knowing, Important, Able

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• It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to "try" more than if you are a pessimist.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Giving Up, Creative, Important

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 3: "Travels Abroad", p. 55, 1991.

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• Thoughts are steered in different ways.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Different, Way, Different Ways

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 275, 1991.

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• The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Littles, Mathematician, Physicist

  "Analogies between Analogies: The Mathematical Reports of S.M. Ulam and His Los Alamos Collaborators". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 1990.

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• The infinite we shall do right away. The finite may take a little longer.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  May, Littles, Infinite

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• I am turned off when I see only formulas and symbols, and little text.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Littles, Turned Off, Formulas

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 275, 1991.

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• Do not lose your faith. A mighty fortress is our mathematics. Mathematics will rise to the challenge, as it always has.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Challenges, Mathematics, Fortresses

  "The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity". Book by Heinz Pagels. Chapter 3, p. 94, 1988.

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• I'm an agnostic. Sometimes I muse deeply on the forces that are for me invisible. When I am almost close to the idea of God, I feel immediately estranged by the horrors of this world, which he seems to tolerate.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Ideas, World, Agnostic

  "The Melting - Pot Revisited: Twenty Well - Known Americans of Polish Background". Book by Olgierd Budrewicz, 1977.

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• In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Chance, Physics, Moments

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 95), 1991.

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• What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Exactly Is, Defining, Mathematics

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 273-274, 1991.

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• He [John von Neumann] had the invaluable faculty of being able to take the most difficult problem and separate it into its components, whereupon everything looked brlliantly simple.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Learning, Simple, Able

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• One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Technology, Race, Giving

  "John von Neumann, 1903-1957". "Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society" 64, no.3, part 2, May, 1958.

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• In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Reality, Mathematics, Mathematical

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 6: "Transition And Crisis", p. 120, 1991.

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• Very soon I discovered that if one gets a feeling for no more than a dozen other radiation and nuclear constants, one can imagine the subatomic world almost tangibly, and manipulate the picture dimensionally and qualitatively, before calculating more precise relationships.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Feelings, Nuclear, World

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 148), 1991.

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• It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Taken, Mathematics, Possession

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 52), 1991.

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• Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Brain, Connections, May

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 277, 1991.

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• What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has
  really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something
  else. Roughly speaking, people know that it deals with numbers,
  figures, with relations, operations, and that its formal procedures
  involving axioms, proofs, lemmas, theorems have not changed
  since the time of Archimedes.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Numbers, Exactly Is, People

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• It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Matter, Theorems, Elegant

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 274, 1991.

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• Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Reading, Years, Sometimes

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam. Preface To the 1983 Edition, p. 27,

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• I am always amazed how much a certain facility with a special and apparently narrow technique can accomplish.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Special, Technique, Certain

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 96), 1991.

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• ... there's nothing new under the sun - everything can be traced
  back to Archimedes or even earlier.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Sun, Nothing New Under The Sun, Nothing New

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• In its evolution from a more primitive nervous system, the brain, as an organ with ten or more billion neurons and many more connections between them must have changed and grown as a result of many accidents.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Brain, Connections, Neurons

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 274, 1991.

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• As a mathematician, von Neumann was quick, brilliant, efficient, and enormously broad in scientific interests beyond mathematics itself. He knew his technical abilities; his virtuosity in following complicated reasoning and his insights were supreme; yet he lacked absolute self confidence.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Self Confidence, Brilliant, Complicated

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 4: "Princeton Days", p. 76, 1991.

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