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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.

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
Public
Gaps
Knowledge
Impressed
Change
Observation
Debate
Enormous
Superficiality
Climate
Debates
Listen
Observations
Theory
Theories

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The history of mathematics is a history of horrendously difficult problems being solved by young people too ignorant to know that they were impossible.
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I mean science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly.
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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.
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What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.
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The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.
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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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I think science and religion should be separate.
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The thing that makes me most optimistic is China and India - both of them doing well.
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I think it's a big mistake to decide too soon what you're going to do with your life.
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If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.
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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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Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published.
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When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddled, incomplete and confusing form. ... For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.
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Technology without morality is barbarous morality without technology is impotent.
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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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Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute.
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That's, of course, the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.
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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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Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them.
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