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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.

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
Looks
Certainly
Muddled
First
Crazy
Glance
Great
Almost
Incomplete
Hope
Glances
Form
Speculation
Doe
Confusing
Look
Appears
Firsts
Innovation

More quotes by Freeman Dyson

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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.
Freeman Dyson
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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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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?
Freeman Dyson
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It's as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand them. John Randall wasn't a great scientist, but he was a great inventor. There's been lots more like him, and it's a shame they don't get Nobel Prizes.
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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People who travel in China tell me that the mood there is still very upbeat, because their media is different from our media. Chinese media emphasize how well things are going and suppress the bad news and publish the good news.
Freeman Dyson
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We won't really understand the brain until we can make models of it which are analog rather than digital, which nobody seems to be trying very much.
Freeman Dyson
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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
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Mostly I'm just writing books for the public, and so I try to describe for the public what the choices are, what they might have to expect in the future and so by warning people ahead of time maybe you have an effect.
Freeman Dyson
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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.]
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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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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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.
Freeman Dyson
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I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.
Freeman Dyson
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We cannot hope to either understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.
Freeman Dyson
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I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.
Freeman Dyson
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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.
Freeman Dyson
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All the time worrying about pushing the children and getting them to be mathematically literate and all that stuff. It's terribly hard on the kids. It's also hard on the teachers. And I think it's totally useless.
Freeman Dyson
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Well germ warfare of course exists. There have been on a small scale... There have been, of course, a few people who got killed with anthrax right here in Princeton.
Freeman Dyson
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I'm prejudiced about education altogether. I think it's terribly overrated.
Freeman Dyson