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If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at five o' clock, I say why not one o' clock?
John von Neumann -
There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.
John von Neumann
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You wake me up early in the morning to tell me that I'm right? Please wait until I'm wrong.
John von Neumann -
The goys have proven the following theorem…
John von Neumann -
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 -
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.
John von Neumann -
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
John von Neumann -
With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
John von Neumann
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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 -
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 -
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 -
You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.
John von Neumann -
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
John von Neumann -
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
John von Neumann
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You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.
John von Neumann -
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 -
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 -
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
John von Neumann