Quotes by John Von Neumann - Page 1

Life is a process which may be abstracted from other media.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Life Is
May
Media
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Computers are like humans - they do everything except think.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Computer
Humans
Thinking
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You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Being Responsible
Responsible
World
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Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Religion
Complicated
Truth Is
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All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Meteorology
Process
Unstable
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Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Men
Science
Math
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There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Knows
Precise
Programming
Talking
Being
Even
No Sense
Sense
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There is no point in being precise if you do not even know what you are talking about.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Knows
No Point
Talking
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You wake me up early in the morning to tell me I am right? Please wait until I am wrong.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Morning
Up Early
Waiting
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With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Elephants
Fit
Four
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There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
God
Easier
Ifs
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I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Bombs
Important
Thinking
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Problems are often stated in vague terms... because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Problem
Term
Uncertain
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Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Humorous
Powerful
Witty
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Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Science
Mean
Numbers
Sin
Anyone
Attempts
Course
Generate
Random
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I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe absolutely in Hilbert space any more.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Space
Believe
May
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If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
I Can
Ifs
Machines
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If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Believe
Math
Simple
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When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Language
May
Nervous
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Technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can go to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate, he will.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Men
Climate
Moon
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If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Mathematical
Might
Transformation
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You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Ifs
Justice
Machines
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The emphasis on mathematical methods seems to be shifted more towards combinatorics and set theory - and away from the algorithm of differential equations which dominates mathematical physics.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Algorithms
Mathematics
Physics
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It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Law
People
Selfish
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It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Technology
Achieve
Be Careful
Careful
Computer
Limits
Silly
Sound
Statements
Years
Although
Pretty
Appear
Possible
Reached
Tend
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Science, as well as technology, will in the near and in the farther future increasingly turn from problems of intensity, substance, and energy, to problems of structure, organization, information, and control.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Technology
Energy
Organization
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The most vitally characteristic fact about mathematics is, in my opinion, its quite peculiar relationship to the natural sciences, or more generally, to any science which interprets experience on a higher than purely descriptive level.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Facts
Levels
Peculiar
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The total subject of mathematics is clearly too broad for any of us. I do not think that any mathematician since Gauss has covered it uniformly and fully; even Hilbert did not and all of us are of considerably lesser width quite apart from the question of depth than Hilbert.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Depth
Mathematics
Thinking
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Neumann, to a physicist seeking help with a difficult problem: Simple. This can be solved by using the method of characteristics. Physicist: I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics. Neumann: In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Science
Simple
Understanding
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Kurt Godel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental - indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time. ... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Godel's achievement.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Space
Achievement
Logic
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Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number - there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Arithmetic
Numbers
Sin
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The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Math
Teaching
Thinking
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By and large it is uniformly true in mathematics that there is a time lapse between a mathematical discovery and the moment when it is useful; and that this lapse of time can be anything from 30 to 100 years, in some cases even more; and that the whole system seems to function without any direction, without any reference to usefulness, and without any desire to do things which are useful.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Desire
Discovery
Years
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The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work-that is, correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Science
Mathematics
Trying
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It is exceptional that one should be able to acquire the understanding of a process without having previously acquired a deep familiarity with running it, with using it, before one has assimilated it in an instinctive and empirical way... Thus any discussion of the nature of intellectual effort in any field is difficult, unless it presupposes an easy, routine familiarity with that field. In mathematics this limitation becomes very severe.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Running
Effort
Understanding
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I am a little troubled about the tea service in the electronic computer building. Apparently the members of your staff consume several times as much supplies as the same number of people do in Fuld Hall and they have been especially unfair in the matter of sugar.... I should like to raise the question whether it would not be better for the computer people to come up to Fuld Hall at the end of the day at 5 o'clock and have their tea here under proper supervision.
John Von Neumann / Mathematician
Numbers
People
Tea
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John Von Neumann Quotes - Page 1

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