Freeman Dyson Quotes - Page 7

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• The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

  Freeman Dyson

  Math, Bridges, Design

  "Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer". The College Mathematics Journal Interview with Donald J. Albers, January 1994.

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• [John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians

  Freeman Dyson

  Made, Mathematician, Subjects

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• If women are doing a Ph.D., they have a conflict between raising a family or finishing the degree, which is just at the worst time - between the ages of 25 to 30 or whatever it is. It ruins the five years of their lives.

  Freeman Dyson

  Years, Age, Finishing

  "Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson talks about math, nuclear rockets, and astounding things about the universe". Interview with Elena Holodny, uk.businessinsider.com. January 3, 2018.

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• I'm prejudiced about education altogether. I think it's terribly overrated.

  Freeman Dyson

  Thinking, Overrated

  "Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson talks about math, nuclear rockets, and astounding things about the universe". Interview with Elena Holodny, www.businessinsider.com. September 9, 2016.

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• I grew up in England at a time when England was winning Nobel Prizes right and left. I mean it was amazing how many Nobel Prizes England was winning in chemistry and physics and biology and all the sciences and at that time the teaching of science in the schools was really lousy.

  Freeman Dyson

  Teaching, School, Mean

  "Could Science Make the 21st Century Worse Than the 20th?". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. March 5, 2010.

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• The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.

  Freeman Dyson

  Mystery, Conscious, Unsolved Mysteries

  "Progress In Religion". Freeman Dyson's Acceptance Speech for the Templeton Prize at the Washington National Cathedral, www.edge.org. May 16, 2000.

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• The fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn't scare me at all. There's no reason why one should be scared.

  Freeman Dyson

  Scare, Climate, Facts

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• If we want to go to space with humans, that's for fun not for science. Human adventures in space are just sporting events.

  Freeman Dyson

  Fun, Adventure, Space

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• The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward.

  Freeman Dyson

  Moving, Years, Data

  "Freeman Dyson forecasts the future" by Freeman Dyson, www.newscientist.com. November 2006.

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• I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized.

  Freeman Dyson

  Path, Becoming, Computer

  Freeman Dyson (2015). “Dreams of Earth and Sky”, p.2, New York Review of Books

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• There is nothing so big nor so crazy that one out of a million technological societies may not feel itself driven to do, provided it is physically possible.

  Freeman Dyson

  Crazy, May, Driven

  Freeman J. Dyson (1996). “Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson with Commentary”, p.559, American Mathematical Soc.

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• One of the memorable moments of my life was when Willard Libby came to Princeton with a little jar full of crystals of barium xenate. A stable compound, looking like common salt, but much heavier. This was the magic of chemistry, to see xenon trapped into a crystal.

  Freeman Dyson

  Xenon, Memorable, Science

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• Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

  Freeman Dyson

  Engineering, Orchids, Snakes

  Freeman Dyson (2015). “Dreams of Earth and Sky”, p.2, New York Review of Books

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• The seeds from Ramanujan's garden have been blowing on the wind and have been sprouting all over the landscape.
  [On the stimulating effects of Ramanujan's mathematical legacy.]

  Freeman Dyson

  Garden, Wind, Legacy

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• We simply don't know yet what's going to happen to the carbon in the atmosphere.

  Freeman Dyson

  Atmosphere, Global Warming, Carbon

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• [On Richard P. Feynman's live demonstration of the rigidity of the O-rings when cold that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, killing seven astronauts:] The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question.

  Freeman Dyson

  Eye, Thinking, Hands

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• Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.

  Freeman Dyson

  Mistake, Engineering, Forgiving

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• The marketplace judges technologies by their practical effectiveness, by whether they succeed or fail to do the job they are designed to do.

  Freeman Dyson

  Jobs, Technology, Effectiveness

  Freeman Dyson (1999). “Imagined World”, p.182, Universities Press

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• Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them.

  Freeman Dyson

  Opportunity, People, Pessimism

  "Freeman Dyson's brain". Interview with Stewart Brand, www.wired.com. February 1, 1998.

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• For me too, the periodic table was a passion. ... As a boy, I stood in front of the display for hours, thinking how wonderful it was that each of those metal foils and jars of gas had its own distinct personality.

  Freeman Dyson

  Passion, Science, Thinking

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• As a working hypothesis to explain the riddle of our existence, I propose that our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so

  Freeman Dyson

  Fate, Interesting, Hypothesis

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• From my childhood it has been my conviction that men would reach the planets in my lifetime . . . this conviction . . . rests on two beliefs, one scientific and one political: (1) there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our present-day science. And we shall only find out what they are if we go out and look for them. (2) it is in the long run essential to the growth of any new and high civilization that small groups of people can escape from their neighbors and from their governments, to go and live as they please in the wilderness.

  Freeman Dyson

  Running, Men, Civilization

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• To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough.

  Freeman Dyson

  Giving, Mind, Body

  Freeman J. Dyson (1999). “The Sun, the Genome & the Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions”, New York : Oxford University Press

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• Thanks to the discoveries of astronomers in the twentieth century, we now know that the heat death is a myth. The heat death can never happen, and there is no paradox.

  Freeman Dyson

  Discovery, Thanks, Heat

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• One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

  Freeman Dyson

  Education, Science, Imagination

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