Neumann Quotes

#1. The approach of von Neumann and Connes to the use of non-commutative algebra in physics is naive, the situation is much more complicated.

Israel Gelfand

#2. Although Oppenheimer's mind was not the whiz-bang computer of a John von Neumann or the astral navigation system of a Hans Bethe, it processed other men's original contributions so adeptly that for multifaceted excellence it may well have been the finest scientific instrument of all.

Algis Valiunas

#3. Most people avoid thinking if they can, some of us are addicted to thinking, but Von Neumann actually enjoyed thinking, maybe even to the exclusion of everything else.

Edward Teller

#4. In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. - John von Neumann

Ray Kurzweil

#5. I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized.

Freeman Dyson

#6. Von Neumann, by contrast, wore a three-piece suit at almost all times, including on a donkey ride down the Grand Canyon; even as a student he was so well dressed that, upon first meeting him, the mathematician David Hilbert reportedly had but one question: Who is his tailor?45

Walter Isaacson

#7. The thing that Von Neumann had, which I've noticed that other geniuses have, is the ability to pick out, in a particular problem, the one crucial thing that's important.

Walter Isaacson

#8. Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.

Gian-Carlo Rota

#9. John von Neumann draws attention to what seemed to him a contrast. He remarked that for simple mechanisms, it is often easier to describe how they work than what they do, while for more complicated mechanisms, it is usually the other way around.

Edsger Dijkstra

#10. Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is.

William Poundstone

#11. He [John von Neumann] had the invaluable faculty of being able to take the most difficult problem and separate it into its components, whereupon everything looked brlliantly simple.

Stanislaw Ulam

#12. I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'

Enrico Fermi

#13. As a mathematician, von Neumann was quick, brilliant, efficient, and enormously broad in scientific interests beyond mathematics itself. He knew his technical abilities; his virtuosity in following complicated reasoning and his insights were supreme; yet he lacked absolute self confidence.

Stanislaw Ulam

#14. My first contact with game theory was a popular article in 'Fortune Magazine' which I read in my last high school year. I was immediately attracted to the subject matter, and when I studied mathematics, I found the fundamental book by von Neumann and Morgenstern in the library and studied it.

Reinhard Selten

#15. how could Neumann Two not have known, but of course he didn't, because that is how things are with Neumann Two, with everybody in this unit, in this army, in this world, they do as they're told, they get scared, they move about with only themselves in mind. Name me someone who does not.

Anthony Doerr

#16. In 1989, I was awarded the Von Neumann Prize in Operations Research Theory by the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences. They cited my works in the areas of portfolio theory, sparse matrix techniques and the SIMSCRIPT programming language.

Harry Markowitz

#17. Has anyone else here seen or fought a nightmare?"
Marshal Spence Neumann lifted his head. "Seen one. Swear to God it looked like my ex-wife for a second."
A chuckle rumbled within the group. Someone mumbled, "She was a nightmare.

Erin Kellison

#18. John von Neumann was the only student I was ever afraid of.

George Polya

#19. Von Neumann told Shannon to call his measure entropy, since no one knows what entropy is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.

Jeremy Campbell

#20. Pascal and C are special-purpose languages for manipulating the registers and memory of a von Neumann-style computer.

Peter Norvig

#21. Von Neumann makes two important observations here: acceleration and singularity. The first idea is that human progress is exponential (that is, it expands by repeatedly multiplying by a constant) rather than linear (that is, expanding by repeatedly adding a constant).

Ray Kurzweil

#22. After preliminary work by a number of other distinguished mathematicians and economists, game theory as a systematic theory started with von Neumann and Morgenstern's book, 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,' published in 1944.

John Harsanyi

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. Emotion manifests itself simultaneously with an alteration of the internal secretions, the circulation, blood pressure, respiration, etc., but equally, unconscious contents excite, and in neurotic cases disturb, the sympathetic nervous system either directly, or indirectly, via the emotions aroused.

Erich Neumann

#26. Well, the cigar I smoke takes two hours."

"When a man loves a woman....O to have such a lover..."

"I gave up a $100,000 lifestyle to take this position!

John Neumann

#27. Tell me why the limousine fleet has increased by 42 percent since Barack Obama took office. Why are we spending taxpayers' money on that? Limos should be for weddings and proms, certainly not for government officials to be riding around in.

Mark Neumann

#28. If somebody walks in to me and says, 'I'm a gay person, I want a job in your office,' I would say that's inappropriate, and they wouldn't be hired because that would mean they are promoting their agenda.

Mark Neumann

#29. If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

John Von Neumann

#30. In a word, the woman first exists as a mother, and the man first exists as a son.10

Erich Neumann

#31. There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.

John Von Neumann

#32. You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.

John Von Neumann

#33. When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system.

John Von Neumann

#34. The one thing she seems to aim at is Individuality; yet she cares nothing for individuals.8

Erich Neumann

#35. In Gnosticism, the way of salvation lies in heightening consciousness and returning to the transcendent spirit, with loss of the unconscious side; whereas uroboric salvation through the Great Mother demands the abandonment of the conscious principle and a homecoming to the unconscious.

Erich Neumann

#36. Life is a process which may be abstracted from other media.

John Von Neumann

#37. Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

John Von Neumann

#38. Accordingly, the fertility goddess is both mother and virgin, the hetaera who belongs to no man but is ready to give herself to any man.

Erich Neumann

#39. 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

#40. There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about

John Von Neumann

#41. Personality is built up largely by acts of introjection: contents that were before experienced outside are taken inside.

Erich Neumann

#42. All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.

John Von Neumann

#43. You wake me up early in the morning to tell me I am right? Please wait until I am wrong.

John Von Neumann

#44. There is no point in being precise if you do not even know what you are talking about.

John Von Neumann

#45. Moreover, the subjective interpretation which sees the myth as a transpersonal psychic event is, in view of the myth's origins in the collective unconscious, much fairer than an attempt to interpret it objectively,

Erich Neumann

#46. I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe in Hilbert space anymore.

John Von Neumann

#47. so long as culture is "in balance," the individuals contained in it normally stand in an adequate relationship to the collective unconscious, even if this is only a relationship to the archetypal projections of the cultural canon and to its highest values.

Erich Neumann

#48. The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that.

Franz Ernst Neumann

#49. 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

#50. Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.

John Von Neumann

#51. I've owned a business for 26 years. My family isn't in politics and my supporters aren't special interest groups in Madison and Milwaukee.

Mark Neumann

#52. You cannot progress beyond you current state, with the same thoughts and actions and that brought you there.

Udo Neumann

#53. Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

John Von Neumann

#54. 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

#55. Siri!" James screamed at his phone. "Oh my god, Siri, call a damn ambulance!" An icon spun in the middle of the screen as it accessed the internet. "Displaying search results for 'cauliflower ambulance'.

Mikey Neumann

#56. I think Barack Obama and his team believe that the federal government is best prepared to handle virtually everything in our lives. I mean, they're socialists in every respect of the word and I think they'd like to take over everything in our lives if they could, including health care.

Mark Neumann

#57. This progressive interiorization is a symptom of the individualization and intensification of human consciousness, and this same principle, which first promoted the growth of personality, continues to govern the next phase of its development (Part II).

Erich Neumann

#58. 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

#59. In Sanskrit, "independent woman" is a synonym for a harlot. Hence the woman who is unattached to a man is not only a universal feminine type but a sacral type in antiquity.

Erich Neumann

#60. The pleasurable qualities associated with the previous ego phase, once that system is outgrown, become painful for the ego of the next phase.

Erich Neumann

#61. Computers are like humans - they do everything except think.

John Von Neumann

#62. Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

John Von Neumann

#63. 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

#64. I'm not God, don't intend to be and hope I never have that much power.

Mark Neumann

#65. Problems are often stated in vague terms ... because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are.

John Von Neumann

#66. If I was elected God for a day, homosexuality wouldn't be permitted, but nobody's electing me God.

Mark Neumann

#67. I don't want to consider myself a TV5 favorite, but it's a blessing that I have more shows than the others.

Mark Neumann

#68. I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman, the same as I've believed all my life.

Mark Neumann

#69. 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

#70. A man whose consciousness is possessed by a particular content has an enormous dynamism in him, namely that of the unconscious content; but this counteracts the centroversion tendency of the ego to work for the whole rather than for the individual content.

Erich Neumann

#71. I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers.

John Von Neumann

#72. 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

#73. Affective reactions resulting from fascination are dangerous; they amount to an invasion by the unconscious.

Erich Neumann

#74. 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