Quote

The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.

Freeman Dyson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Purpose
Future
Thinking
People
Predict
Hopes
Raise
Raises

More quotes by Freeman Dyson

Image
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.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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 old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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
Image
Everything in my life was luck. The key to having an interesting life is to always say yes to anything crazy.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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 universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily over time.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn't scare me at all. There's no reason why one should be scared.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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 seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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
Image
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.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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
Image
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 happen, and there is no paradox.
Freeman Dyson
Image
I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.
Freeman Dyson
Image
It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true
Freeman Dyson
Image
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.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.
Freeman Dyson