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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 find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

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
Point
Fit
Bridges
Problem
Mathematics
Mathematical
Find
Structure
Math
Right
Bottom
Architecture
Miraculously
Like
Line
Main
Mathematicians
Design
Details
Overall
Building
Essential
Mathematician
Lines
Essentials
Bridge

More quotes by Freeman Dyson

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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.
Freeman Dyson
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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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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.
Freeman Dyson
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It makes very little sense to believe the output of the climate models.
Freeman Dyson
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Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.
Freeman Dyson
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Of course, the English countryside is completely artificial. It was naturally a forest they chopped down the trees and made it into what it is now: really a beautiful country.
Freeman Dyson
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I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.
Freeman Dyson
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We do not know how much of the environmental change is due to human activities and how much [is due] to long-term natural processes over which we have no control.
Freeman Dyson
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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.
Freeman Dyson
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Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the unboundedness of human destiny.
Freeman Dyson
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It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
Freeman Dyson
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There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.
Freeman Dyson
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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.
Freeman Dyson
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Nothing is boring if you look at carefully.
Freeman Dyson
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I'm prejudiced about education altogether. I think it's terribly overrated.
Freeman Dyson
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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.
Freeman Dyson
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You could say science also is an art.
Freeman Dyson
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Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
Freeman Dyson
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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.
Freeman Dyson
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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.
Freeman Dyson