Dyson Quotes & Sayings

When we look ahead to 2018, we should expect big steps forward in science to come once again from changes in style rather than from marginal improvements in technology. — Freeman Dyson

George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual. — Michael Eric Dyson

It doesn't cost anything to replicate code. So the companies that make code, that's why they've done so well. We take it for granted now, but why is it that code is free? It's because somebody built this self-replicating process. — George Dyson

Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible. — James Dyson

By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth. — Michael Eric Dyson

Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth
even if they decide to help the less fortunate
while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible. — Michael Eric Dyson

Part of the problem is when we bring in a new technology we expect it to be perfect in a way that we don't expect the world that we're familiar with to be perfect. — Esther Dyson

After sketching his program for the scientific revolution that he foresaw, Bacon ends his account with a prayer: "Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies". That is still a good prayer for all of us as we begin the twenty-first century. — Freeman Dyson

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. — Freeman Dyson

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence. — Freeman Dyson

I just think things should work properly — James Dyson

technics ... is the means through which man becomes a work of his own.... What is so frightening about technics is nothing more than the angst man feels before, and in, the exposure of his existence to the abyss of his lack of essence."6 — Frances Dyson

There is no conscious choice of heterosexual identity any more than there is a homosexual one. The last person in the world who wants to be homosexual, for the most part, are homosexuals. — Michael Eric Dyson

Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers. — Michael Eric Dyson

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. — Freeman Dyson

Everybody recognizes that if you can make very efficient electric motors, you can make a quantum leap forward. — James Dyson

The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests. — Michael Eric Dyson

I'm a 'tweener,' man! I couldn't march with Dr. King and them. And I'm too old to be a hip-hopper. But I've been granted honorary status in each generation ... I see my tongue as a bridge over which ideas can travel back and forth. — Michael Eric Dyson

There are many Americans who regardless of the intelligence or the profound political persuasion of a figure will never vote for a black man. Not all of them are racists; some are skeptical, and some are suspicious. — Michael Eric Dyson

Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing. — James Dyson

Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings. — Freeman Dyson

If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question. — Freeman Dyson

It is better to be wrong than to be vague. — Freeman Dyson

Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy. — Esther Dyson

Help me to be careful of the toes I step on today, as they may be connected to the ass that I may have to kiss tomorrow. — Rikki M. Dyson

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence. — Freeman Dyson

You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer. — James Dyson

Life is a mountain of solvable problems, and I enjoy that. — James Dyson

If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed. I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination. — Freeman Dyson

As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information. — Freeman Dyson

The pain of childbirth is not remembered. It's the child that's remembered. — Freeman Dyson

I think that the use of copyright is going to change dramatically. Part of it is economics. There is just going to be so much content out there - there's a scarcity of attention. Information consumes attention, and there's too much information. — Esther Dyson

Exactly 5,126 attempts to make the first bagless vacuum cleaner were failures-some catastrophic disappointments, some minor defects. It took 15 years. Prototype 5,127 was the success ... Failure is painful, but it spurs on improvement like nothing else. — James Dyson

The guy you've been seeing, the one you were all so secret-squirrel about, was my dad?" Cooper nodded. "Yes." "Oh, fucking hell," Ryan squeaked. "The one you said sucked dick like a Dyson? — N.R. Walker

The world of science and the world of literature have much in common. Each is an international club, helping to tie mankind together across barriers of nationality, race and language. I have been doubly lucky, being accepted as a member of both. — Freeman Dyson

In the minds of many Americans, if you are a radical Democrat or a Socialist, you are automatically a Communist. And if you are a Communist, then therefore you are an anti-American person and a person who is not a patriot. But nothing is further from the truth. — Michael Eric Dyson

Encryption ... is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running the government ... It's hard to think of a more powerful, less dangerous tool for liberty. — Esther Dyson

No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members. — Michael Eric Dyson

When you saw the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," that was Michael [Jackson]'s story write large. Born as an elderly person, Benjamin Button was, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and in the film starring Brad Pitt, he dies as a newborn child. Michael Jackson's childhood was one of enormous, prodigious production.He was a child prodigy, he was a wunderkind. — Michael Eric Dyson

Freeman Dyson said: "It is characteristic of scientific life that it is easy when you have a problem to work on. The hard part is finding your problem. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made. — Michael Eric Dyson

Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever. — Michael Eric Dyson

Michael [Jackson] reconstructed his face and deconstructed the African features into a spooky European geography of fleshly possibilities, and yet what we couldn't deny, that even as his face got whiter and whiter his music got Blacker and Blacker. His soul got more deeply rooted in the existential agony and the profound social grief that Black people are heir to. — Michael Eric Dyson

We need all the newfangled web-based Internet spread, you know, social media that can catalyze, you know, some serious consciousness about what's going on. But we also need people on the streets pounding the pavement to make a significant and dramatic appearance to suggest that what's going on here is unacceptable. — Michael Eric Dyson

The computer models are very good at solving equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. — Freeman Dyson

Few influential people involved with the Internet claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool for making money, finding lost relatives, receiving medical advice, or, come to that, trading instructions for making bombs. — Esther Dyson

Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the unboundedness of human destiny. — Freeman Dyson

Whatever colour the pots, the kettle may indeed be black. — H.V.D. Dyson

When you see the misogyny of hip-hop, it's so horrible, it's so putrid, it's so, you know, odious, that we know, we smell, we see it. The misogyny that is reified, that is reinforced, that is subtly reproduced in corporate America or in church life or in synagogues and temples and the like, is sometimes more subtly dealt with. — Michael Eric Dyson

It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more. — Michael Eric Dyson

I think there's no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining them to the politics of dance, of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on that sphere alone. — Michael Eric Dyson

Have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds. — Freeman Dyson

I guess I'm a Luddite. — Michael Eric Dyson

I think I have the right to know what Steve Forbes paid in taxes - I don't think there should be a law. I think there should be a presumption. I wouldn't vote for a guy who wouldn't reveal what he paid in taxes. That kind of thing. — Esther Dyson

Change means that what was before wasn't perfect. People want things to be better. — Esther Dyson

[John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians — Freeman Dyson

The computer dictates how you do something, whereas with a pencil you're totally free. — James Dyson

A model is done when nothing else can be taken out. — Freeman Dyson

The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley. — Michael Eric Dyson

Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent. — Michael Eric Dyson

What disturbs or assures us about race has very little to do with blood or biology. Race is about how you use language, understand your heritage, interpret your history, identify with your kin, figure out what your meaning and worth to a society that places values on you beyond your control. And it's also about what people see you as - or take you to be. — Michael Eric Dyson

My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible. — Michael Eric Dyson

My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies, I'll watch almost everything. — James Dyson

Life is not a race, but a journey to be savoured each step of the way. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. — Brian Dyson

When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles. — Esther Dyson

When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail. — Michael Eric Dyson

All of us should be much more humble and contrite when we point the finger at somebody else, because four more fingers are pointing back at us. — Michael Eric Dyson

I joined the board of the Santa Fe Institute. — Esther Dyson

An inventor's path is chorused with groans, riddled with fist-banging and punctuated by head scratches. — James Dyson

After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology — James Dyson

Oh ... ah ... fuuuuck! I scream as he puts the Dyson vacuum suction on my quim. — Georgia Cates

As an investor in small companies, I don't care how rich Microsoft is. I care about what my opportunities are. — Esther Dyson

The reason Dick's physics was so hard for ordinary people to grasp was that he did not use equations. The usual theoretical physics was done since the time of Newton was to begin by writing down some equations and then to work hard calculating solutions of the equations. This was the way Hans and Oppy and Julian Schwinger did physics. Dick just wrote down the solutions out of his head without ever writing down the equations. He had a physical picture of the way things happen, and the picture gave him the solutions directly with a minimum of calculation. It was no wonder that people who had spent their lives solving equations were baffled by him. Their minds were analytical; his was pictorial. — Freeman Dyson

The debacle of European pacifism has at least one clear lesson to teach us: pacifists, if they are to be effective in the modern world, must be as wholehearted and as brave as Gandhi. — Freeman Dyson

The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines. — Freeman Dyson

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming. — Freeman Dyson

Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry. — Michael Eric Dyson

New landscape of personal media has given us a vaster wasteland of cyberspace. But, luckily for us, there's some really wonderful stuff in it. And if history is any guide, as the media matures, the quality will continue to go up. — Esther Dyson

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes. — Michael Eric Dyson

Our thinking is permeated by our historical myths — Freeman Dyson

I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them. — Michael Eric Dyson

We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for people have been the cold periods rather than the warm periods. — Freeman Dyson

Keynes was chief economic adviser to the British government and largely responsible for keeping the British economy afloat at a time when more than half of our gross national product, and all of out foreign exchange, was being spent on the war ... I was lucky to be present at one of his rare appearances in Cambridge, when he gave a lecture with the title "Newton, the Man." ... Four years later he died of heart failure, precipitated by overwork and the hardships of crossing the Atlantic repeatedly in slow propeller-driven airplanes under wartime conditions. — Freeman Dyson

Galison uses the phrase "critical opalescence" to sum up the story of what happened in 1905 when relativity was discovered. Critical opalescence is a strikingly beautiful effect that is seen when water is heated to a temperature of 374 degrees Celsius under high pressure. 374 degrees is called the critical temperature of water. It is the temperature at which water turns continuously into steam without boiling. At the critical temperature and pressure, water and steam are indistinguishable. They are a single fluid, unable to make up its mind whether to be a gas or a liquid. In that critical state, the fluid is continually fluctuating between gas and liquid, and the fluctuations are seen visually as a multicolored sparkling. The sparkling is called opalescence because it is also seen in opal jewels which have a similar multicolored radiance. — Freeman Dyson

Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore. — James Dyson

I knew Snoop Dog didn't start misogyny. I knew that Tupac Shakur didn't start sexism, and God knows that Dr. Dre didn't start patriarchy. Yet they extended it in vicious form within their own communities. They made vulnerable people more vulnerable. — Michael Eric Dyson

Some people are academically inclined, some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter. — James Dyson

People need to understand that the technology is for them. It's not to them. It's not over them. People still sometimes want to be led a little too much. — Esther Dyson

But for poor black people and working-class black people, it is a much more difficult way to go. The over-incarceration of black people is just intolerable. When you look at the disparity in terms of education and access to fair schooling, it is horrible. If this would happen to white people in this country, it would not be tolerated. — Michael Eric Dyson

I learned that the moment you want to slow down is the moment you should accelerate. — James Dyson

I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be sure. It was heterosexist in the sense that it took the heterosexual orientation as the norm from which to start as the given. And everything that fell outside of that was not acceptable. — Michael Eric Dyson

I've fought court battles over my inventions before. — James Dyson

In the sense that people who produce things and work get rewarded, statistically. You don't get rewarded precisely for your effort, but in Russia you got rewarded for being alive, but not very well rewarded. — Esther Dyson

Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth. — Freeman Dyson

History is one of the only fields where contributions by amateurs are taken seriously, providing you follow the rules and document your sources. In history, it's what you write, not what your credentials are. — George Dyson

When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this. — Michael Eric Dyson

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success. — James Dyson

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something. — James Dyson

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this. — Michael Eric Dyson

The key to success is failure ... Success is made of 99 percent failure. — James Dyson