Freeman Dyson Quotes

120 quotes in 1953 categories

• The whole point of science is that most of it is uncertain. That's why science is exciting--because we don't know. Science is all about things…
• The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to…
• As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost…
• 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…
• 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…
• I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended…
• For a physicist mathematics is not just a tool by means of which phenomena can be calculated, it is the main source of concepts and…
• 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…
• The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily over time. Also, the total order in the…
• Sometimes we talked about the nature of the human soul and about the Cosmic Unity of souls that I had believed in so firmly when…
• For some days I quietly worked out in my own mind the metaphysics of Cosmic Unity. The more I thought about it, the more convinced…
• New directions in science are launched by new tools much more often than by new concepts. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain…
• Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens... On the other hand, intelligence may be a…
• Have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in…
• 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…
• You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to…
• In the future, a new generation of artists will be writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses.
• Plasma seems to have the kinds of properties one would like for life. It's somewhat like liquid water--unpredictable and thus able to behave in an…
• Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the unboundedness of human destiny.
• The Besicovitch style is architectural. He builds out of simply elements a delicate and complicated architectural structure, usually with a hierarchical plan, and then, when…

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