John von Neumann Quotes
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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?
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There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.
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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.
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If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other.
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The goys have proven the following theorem…
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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.
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If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
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With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
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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.
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Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
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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.
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When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system.
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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.
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Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
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You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.
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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.
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There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
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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.