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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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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
Difficult
History
Young
Problem
Solved
People
Ignorant
Mathematics
Problems
Impossible

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The thing that makes me most optimistic is China and India - both of them doing well.
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Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word.
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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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A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.
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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.
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If women are doing a Ph.D., they have a conflict between raising a family or finishing the degree, which is just at the worst time - between the ages of 25 to 30 or whatever it is. It ruins the five years of their lives.
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It is in the long run essential to the growth of any new and high civilization that small groups of men can escape from their neighbors and from their government, to go and live as they please in the wilderness. A truly isolated, small, and creative society will never again be possible on this planet.
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Science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.
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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.
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Almost everything about the universe is astounding.
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In religion, you're supposed to be somehow in touch with something deep and full of mysteries.
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The idea that God may be approached and understood through intellectual analysis is uniquely Christian... It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind.
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Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.
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Nothing is boring if you look at carefully.
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Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
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It is better to be wrong than to be vague.
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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.
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The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.
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We simply don't know yet what's going to happen to the carbon in the atmosphere.
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As far as I can see, our concentration of different abilities in one species - there's nothing I can see that in this Darwinian evolution that could've done that. So it seems to be a miracle of some sort.
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