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Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say 'We've discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.' And if it doesn't change the world, then they say, 'There's an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.'

Gian-Carlo Rota

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Gian-Carlo Rota
Age: 66 †
Born: 1932
Born: April 27
Died: 1999
Died: April 18
Mathematician
Philosopher
University Teacher
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Mathematicians
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Dollars
Salesman
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Terrible
Physicist
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More quotes by Gian-Carlo Rota

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Are mathematical ideas invented or discovered? This question has been repeatedly posed by philosophers through the ages and will probably be with us forever.
Gian-Carlo Rota
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A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.
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The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite.
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There is something in statistics that makes it very similar to astrology.
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Stan Ulam was lazy, ... He talked too much ... He was self-centered ... . He had an overpowering personality.
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Very little mathematics has direct applications - though fortunately most of it has plenty of indirect ones.
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The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated.
Gian-Carlo Rota
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If we have no idea why a statement is true, we can still prove it by induction.
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God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.
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The lack of real contact between mathematics and biology is either a tragedy, a scandal or a challenge, it is hard to decide which.
Gian-Carlo Rota
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Nature imitates mathematics.
Gian-Carlo Rota
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THE COMPUTER IS JUST AN INSTRUMENT for doing faster what we already know how to do slower. All pretensions to computer intelligence and paradise-tomorrow promises should be toned down before the public turns away in disgust. And if that should happen, our civilization might not survive.
Gian-Carlo Rota