20 quotes
We know that for a long time everything we do will be nothing more than the jumping off point for those who have the advantage of already being aware of our ultimate results.
I am a mathematician, the later life of a prodigy (1953)
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
To live effectively is to live with adequate information.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
There are no answers, only cross-references.
A significant idea of organization cannot be obtained in a world in which everything is necessary and nothing is contingent'
I am a mathematician, the later life of a prodigy (1953)
The most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences were those which had been neglected as a no-man's land between the various established fields.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.
[T]he best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same cat.
Philosophy of Science (1945)
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
I do not expect to publish any future work of mine which may do damage in the hands of irresponsible militarists...
The experience of the scientists who have worked on the atomic bomb has indicated that in any investigation of this kind the scientist ends by putting unlimited powers in the hands of the people whom he is least inclined to trust with their use.
A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1964)
Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. It seems almost as if progress itself and our fight against the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill path from which we are trying to escape.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
A faith which we follow upon orders imposed from outside is no faith, and a community which puts its dependence upon such a pseudo-faith is ultimately bound to ruin itself because of the paralysis which the lack of a healthy growing science imposes upon it.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
Neither the artist nor the mathematician may be able to tell you what constitutes the difference between a significant piece of work and an inflated trifle; but if he is not able to recognize this in his own heart, he is no artist and no mathematician.
The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
Until we in the community have made up our minds that what we really want is expiation, or removal, or reform, or or the discouragement of potential criminals, we shall get none of these, but only a confusion in which crime breeds more crime.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
May we have the courage to face the eventual doom of our civilization as we have the courage to face the certainty of our personal doom. The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belong to acquiescence and hence to weakness.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
We are in the position of the man who has only two ambitions in life. One is to invent the universal solvent which will dissolve any solid substance, and the second is to invent the universal container which will hold any liquid. Whatever this inventor does, he will be frustrated.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)