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Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.

Freeman Dyson

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Freeman Dyson
Age: 96 †
Born: 1923
Born: December 15
Died: 2020
Died: February 28
Mathematician
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Professor
Theoretical Physicist
Crowthorne
Berkshire
Freeman John Dyson
Freeman J. Dyson
Normal
Exploring
Repairing
Brother
Invented
Wright
Technology
Brothers
Monotony
Successful
Relief
Diving
Often
Selling
Technologies
Business
Flying
Bicycle
Bicycles
Enjoyed
Caves
Jacques
Begin
Hobbies
Scuba

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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 read God's mind?
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I don't know, but I think it's quite possible that the more science you teach kids in school the more it turns them off, so I don't know. I mean you never can tell which way it will go.
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If you're in the business world, that's what's expected: You should go bust and then start again on something else. So it's a much more relaxed kind of a culture. It's also competitive, but not in such a vicious way. I think the academic world is actually much more destructive of young people.
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That's what I learned from World War II. Things are always more complicated than most people believe.
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Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
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To me, mathematics is like playing the violin. Some people can do it - others can't. If you don't have it, then there's no point in pretending.
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Just because you see pictures of glaciers falling into the ocean doesn't mean anything bad is happening. This is something that happens all the time. It's part of the natural cycle of things. We know from measurements that glaciers have been melting for 200 years at least.
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The reason why new concepts in any branch of science are hard to grasp is always the same contemporary scientists try to picture the new concept in terms of ideas which existed before.
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There are two different ways of looking at the universe and it's the same universe with two different windows. The science window gives you a view of the world, and the religion window gives you a totally different view. You can't look at both of them at the same time, but they're both true.
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We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.
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The world is just - it's wonderful when you look at all the detail. It's just amazing.
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It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
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Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our understanding.
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We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.
Freeman Dyson
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I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
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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.
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I think the fact that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and talked about anthrax bombs probably helped because at least we... people had the understanding before the war began that's something we didn't want to get into.
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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 enormously complex fashion. It could probably carry as much information as DNA does. It has at least the potential for organizing itself in interesting ways.
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Science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly. I mean World War I was a horrible war and it was mostly the fault of science, so that was in a way a very bad time for science, but on the other hand we were winning all these Nobel Prizes.
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Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.
Freeman Dyson