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

6 Copy quote
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

4 Copy quote
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

12 Copy quote
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

11 Copy quote
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.

9 Copy quote

Show source
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

4 Copy quote

Show source
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

7 Copy quote
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.

4 Copy quote

Show source
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

4 Copy quote
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

4 Copy quote

Show source
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

4 Copy quote
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.

4 Copy quote

Show source
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

12 Copy quote
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

12 Copy quote
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.

4 Copy quote

Show source
[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

17 Copy quote
For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong.

Scott Berkun

Song, Strong, Kings

4 Copy quote
The Saylor Foundation is meant to be a gadfly to encourage Google, Apple, MIT, Harvard, the United States government, and the Chinese government to aggressively pursue digital education.

Michael J. Saylor

Government, Apples, Google

4 Copy quote
A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics.

Cynthia Kenyon

Beautiful, People, Tree

21 Copy quote
Find something that you love to do, and find a place that you really like to do it in. I found something I loved to do. Im a mechanical engineer by training, and I loved it. I still do. My son is a nuclear engineer at MIT, a junior, and I get the same vibe from him. Your work has to be compelling. You spend a lot of time doing it.

Ursula Burns

Son, Training, Nuclear

30 Copy quote
If you take a look at places like Harvard, it's striking. In the early ,50s, I think there were a handful of Jewish professors, three or four. But by the 1960s, there were Jewish deans and administrators. In fact, one of the reasons why MIT became a great university was because they admitted Jews whereas Harvard did not.

Noam Chomsky

Thinking, Three, Looks

Source: thehumanist.com

4 Copy quote

Show source
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

7 Copy quote

Show source
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

4 Copy quote

Show source
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.

53 Copy quote

Show source
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

6 Copy quote