Quote

Half genius and half buffoon, Freeman Dyson ... wrote. ... [Richard] Feynman struck him as uproariously American-unbuttoned and burning with physical energy. It took him a while to realize how obsessively his new friend was tunneling into the very bedrock of modern science.

James Gleick

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Gleick
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: August 1
Author
Biographer
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Science
Genius
Bedrock
Realize
Richard
Friend
Struck
Unbuttoned
Realizing
Obsession
Feynman
Modern
Burning
Buffoon
American
Wrote
Buffoons
Half
Physical
Obsessively
Energy
Took
Freeman

More quotes by James Gleick

Image
The Internet is like a town that leaves its streets unmarked on the principle that people who don't already know don't belong
James Gleick
Image
In the mind's eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
James Gleick
Image
Running for president is the new selfie.
James Gleick
Image
I have seen the future, and it is still in the future.
James Gleick
Image
Google is where we go for answers. People used to go elsewhere or, more likely, stagger along not knowing.
James Gleick
Image
The history of life is written in terms of negative entropy.
James Gleick
Image
Vengeful conquerors burn books as if the enemy's souls reside there, too.
James Gleick
Image
At its most fundamental, information is a binary choice. In other words, a single bit of information is one yes-or-no choice.
James Gleick
Image
Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.
James Gleick
Image
We choose mania over boredom every time.
James Gleick
Image
The universe is computing its own destiny.
James Gleick
Image
Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.
James Gleick
Image
The microwave oven is one of the modern objects that convey the most elemental feeling of power over the passing seconds ... If you suffer from hurry sickness in its most advanced stages, you may find yourself punching 88 seconds instead of 90 because it is faster to tap the same digit twice.
James Gleick
Image
As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldnt necessarily be good.
James Gleick
Image
Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.
James Gleick
Image
The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.
James Gleick
Image
For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.
James Gleick
Image
It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.
James Gleick
Image
When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.
James Gleick
Image
Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.
James Gleick