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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
Begin
Hobbies
Scuba
Normal
Exploring
Repairing
Brother
Invented
Wright
Technology
Brothers
Monotony
Successful
Relief
Diving
Often
Selling
Technologies
Business
Flying
Bicycle
Bicycles
Enjoyed
Caves
Jacques

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When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.
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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.]
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It's us that's really amazing. As far as I can see, our concentration of different abilities in one species - there's nothing I can see that in this Darwinian evolution that could've done that. So it seems to be a miracle of some sort.
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Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.
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The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.
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As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information.
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Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.
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All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control. Describing John von Neumann's aspiration for the application of computers sufficiently large to solve the problems of meteorology, despite the sensitivity of the weather to small perturbations.
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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.
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I grew up in England and we spent most of the time on Latin and Greek and very little on science, and I think that was good because it meant we didn't get turned off. It was... Science was something we did for fun and not because we had to.
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If you go to London now, not everything is beautiful, but it's amazingly better than it was. And the Thames is certainly a lot better: There are fish in the Thames.
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I think that what the machines can do, of course, is wonderful, but it's not the same as what the brain can do.
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For me, science is just a bunch of tools - it's like playing the violin. I just enjoy calculating, and it's an instrument I know how to play. It's almost an athletic performance, in a way. I was just watching the Olympics, and that's how I feel when proving a theorem.
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We do not need to have an agreed set of goals before we do something ambitious!
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Everything in my life was luck. The key to having an interesting life is to always say yes to anything crazy.
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I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.
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No matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory.
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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.
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Almost everything about the universe is astounding.
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I think we're doing pretty well. It's clear the media, of course, always gives you the bad news.
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