John Von Neumann Quotes

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

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.

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

Computers are like humans - they do everything except think.

Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.

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

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

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe absolutely in Hilbert space any more.

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.

Technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can go to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate, he will.

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

If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.

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

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

If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other.

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.

Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.