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It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is.

— Stanislaw Ulam Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991)

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More quotes by Stanislaw Ulam

Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain.

Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991)

The story that Dick Feynman could open safes whose combinations had been forgotten by their owners is true.

Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991)

What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else.

Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991)

The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.

It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck".

Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991)

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