Quote

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

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
Pretending
Mathematics
Playing
Point
Others
Like
People
Violin

More quotes by 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
Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the unboundedness of human destiny.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Almost everything about the universe is astounding.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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
Image
I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.
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
Some of my friends like to keep science and religion together, but I certainly like to keep them separate.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.
Freeman Dyson
Image
It's us that's really amazing. 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.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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
Image
Science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly. I mean World War I was a horrible war and it was mostly the fault of science, so that was in a way a very bad time for science, but on the other hand we were winning all these Nobel Prizes.
Freeman Dyson
Image
As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The language that nature speaks is the same language that we invented for mathematics. That's just an amazing piece of luck, which we don't understand.
Freeman Dyson
Image
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
Image
We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.
Freeman Dyson
Image
We simply don't know yet what's going to happen to the carbon in the atmosphere.
Freeman Dyson
Image
You could say science also is an art.
Freeman Dyson
Image
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens... On the other hand, intelligence may be a cancer of purposeless technological exploitation, sweeping across a galaxy as irresistibly as it has swept across our own planet.
Freeman Dyson