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If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.

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
Matter
Obituary
Nasty
Probably
Didn

More quotes by Freeman Dyson

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Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.
Freeman Dyson
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To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough.
Freeman Dyson
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Now, as Mandelbrot points out, ... Nature has played a joke on the mathematicians. The 19th-century mathematicians may not have been lacking in imagination, but Nature was not. The same pathological structures that the mathematicians invented to break loose from 19th-century naturalism turn out to be inherent in familiar objects all around us.
Freeman Dyson
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I think the biggest misconception is that everybody has to learn mathematics. That seems to be a complete mistake.
Freeman Dyson
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Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word.
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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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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I think that what the machines can do, of course, is wonderful, but it's not the same as what the brain can do.
Freeman Dyson
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That was the wonderful thing about Ramanujan. He discovered so much, and yet he left so much more in his garden for other people to discover.
Freeman Dyson
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Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
Freeman Dyson
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The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.
Freeman Dyson
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As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information.
Freeman Dyson
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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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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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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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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.
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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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.
Freeman Dyson
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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
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I think that the artificial-intelligence people are making a lot of noise recently, claiming that artificial intelligence is making huge progress and we're going to be outstripped by the machines.
Freeman Dyson