Neumann Quotes & Sayings

John von Neumann was the only student I was ever afraid of. — George Polya

You cannot progress beyond you current state, with the same thoughts and actions and that brought you there. — Udo Neumann

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

kinship libido."8 That is to say, the original state of participation mystique in the uroboros expresses itself as the force of inertia that keeps man fixed in the oldest and most intimate of family ties. These family ties are personalistically projected to mother and sister; and the symbolic incest with them, straining back to the uroboros, is therefore marked by a 'lower femininity" which binds the individual and his ego to the unconscious. — Erich 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

In the Game of Life, as in our world, self-reproducing patterns are complex objects. One estimate, based on the earlier work of mathematician John von Neumann, places the minimum size of a self-replicating pattern in the Game of Life at ten trillion squares - roughly the number of molecules in a single human cell. — Stephen Hawking

There is no religion and no philosophy that can give us a comprehensive answer to the whole of our problems, and the abandonment and isolation of the individual who is given no answer, or only inadequate answers, to his question lead to a situation in which more and more cheap, obvious solutions and answers are sought and provided. As, everywhere and in all departments of life, there are contradictory schools and parties, and an equal number of contradictory answers, one of the most frequent reactions is that modern man ceases to ask questions and takes refuge in a conception that considers only the most obvious, superficial aspects, and becomes skeptical, nihilistic, and egocentric. Or, alternatively, he tries to solve all his problems by plunging headlong into a collective situation and a collective conviction, and seeks to redeem himself in this way. — Erich Neumann

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

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

All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control. — John Von Neumann

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

The one thing she seems to aim at is Individuality; yet she cares nothing for individuals.8 — Erich Neumann

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

As masculine self-consciousness grows stronger, the stage of matriarchy is followed by that of division. Symptomatic of this transition period is the twin-brother motif in mythology, which expresses the mutual affinity of opposites. This division turns destructively against itself in self-mutilation and suicide. As we saw, in uroboric and matriarchal castration the will of the Great Mother was paramount. But the centroversion tendency which underlies the ego-hero's struggle for self-preservation and which first takes the form of anxiety, advances beyond the passive, narcissistic stage and turns into resistance, defiance, and aggression directed against the Great Mother, as illustrated mythologically in the story of Hippolytus. — Erich Neumann

Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. — John Von Neumann

I'm not God, don't intend to be and hope I never have that much power. — Mark Neumann

He was "a magician, a magician in the sense that he took what was given and simply forced the conclusions logically out of it, whether it was algebra, geometry, or whatever. He had some way of forcing out the results that made him different from the rest of the people." Israel Halperin about von Neumann — Robert Leonard

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

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

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

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

The four had come to an exciting decision" during the six months of the blockade threatened by the authorities, they would make the ruins a laboratory, a demonstration of how well and happily men could live with virtually no machines. They saw now the common man's wisdom in wrecking practically everything. That was the way to do it, and the hell with moderation!
"All right, so we'll heat our water and cook our food and light and warm our homes with wood fires," said Lasher.
"And walk wherever we're going," said Finnerty.
"And read books instead of watching television," said von Neumann. "The Renaissance comes to upstate New York! We'll rediscover the two greatest wonders of the world, the human mind and hand. — Kurt Vonnegut

When part of this ecosystem was lacking, such as for John Atanasoff at Iowa State or Charles Babbage in the shed behind his London home, great concepts ended up being consigned to history's basement. And when great teams lacked passionate visionaries, such as Penn after Mauchly and Eckert left, Princeton after von Neumann, or Bell Labs after Shockley, innovation slowly withered. — Walter Isaacson

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

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

In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "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." With that, the conversation was over. — Freeman Dyson

Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the language. — John Backus

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. - John von Neumann — Ray Kurzweil

PROFESSOR EMERITUS WOTAN Ulm, of the University of Oxford East 5, author of the bestselling if controversial memoir Peer Reviewers and Other Idiots: A Life In Academia, had consented to give a recorded lecture on von Neumann replicators to be carried as briefing material on the US Navy twain USS Brian Cowley. — Terry Pratchett

The other line of argument, which leads to the opposite conclusion, arises from looking at artificial automata. Everyone knows that a machine tool is more complicated than the elements which can be made with it, and that, generally speaking, an automaton A, which can make an automaton B, must contain a complete description of B, and also rules on how to behave while effecting the synthesis. So, one gets a very strong impression that complication, or productive potentiality in an organization, is degenerative , that an organization which synthesizes something is necessarily more complicated, of a higher order, than the organization it synthesizes. This conclusion, arrived at by considering artificial automaton, is clearly opposite to our early conclusion, arrived at by considering living organisms. — John Von Neumann

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

In a word, the woman first exists as a mother, and the man first exists as a son.10 — Erich Neumann

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

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

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

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

The way of the unconscious is different. Symbols gather round the thing to be explained, understood, interpreted. The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric grouping of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides. Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped, points to another facet of meaning. Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express. — Erich Neumann

... our aim has been to provide anyone who is seriously interested with an introduction to the world of the archetypes, and to make this introduction as simple as possible. For this reason we have included ... a number of schemas, or diagrams, which as experience has shown, make things much easier for most people, though by no means for all. Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, p.xii. — Erich Neumann

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

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

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

[John] von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann's advice. It's made me a very happy man ever since. But it was von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility! — Richard P. Feynman

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

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about — John Von Neumann

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

That's the Staatsoper," says Neumann Two one night. The facade of a grand building rises gracefully, pilastered and crenelated. Stately wings soar on either side, somehow both heavy and light. It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world - what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them? When Russian prisoners are chained by threes and fours to fences while German privates tuck live grenades in their pockets and run? Opera — Anthony Doerr

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neumann One, if he were not scheduled to die ten weeks from now in the Allied invasion of Normandy, might have become a barber later in life, who would have a smelled of talc and whiskey and put his index finger into men's ears to position their heads, whose pants and shirts always would have been covered with clipped hairs, who, in his shop, would have taped postcards of the Alps around the circumference of a big cheap wavery miirror, who would have been faithful to his stout wife for the rest of his life
Neumann One says, Time for haircuts. — Anthony Doerr

There are, of course, many reasons to think that brains operate mostly in parallel. Individual neurons are too slow to allow brains to operate in strict serial von Neumann fashion, and ample data suggest that in any given laboratory task (and by extension, any real-world situation) many different parts of the brain are engaged simultaneously. — Gary F. Marcus

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

According to one story, Von Neumann was asked to assist with the design of a new supercomputer, required to solve a new and important mathematical problem which was beyond the capacities of existing supercomputers. He asked to have the problem explained to him, solved it in moments with pen and paper and then turned down the request. Von — Tim Harford

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

It is exceptional that one should be able to acquire the understanding of a process without having previously acquired a deep familiarity with running it, with using it, before one has assimilated it in an instinctive and empirical way ... Thus any discussion of the nature of intellectual effort in any field is difficult, unless it presupposes an easy, routine familiarity with that field. In mathematics this limitation becomes very severe. — John Von Neumann

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

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

Computers are like humans - they do everything except think. — John Von Neumann

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

Affective reactions resulting from fascination are dangerous; they amount to an invasion by the unconscious. — Erich Neumann

Life is a process which may be abstracted from other media. — John Von Neumann

If the ego is to attain a condition of tranquillity in which to exercise discrimination, consciousness and the differentiated function must be as far removed as possible from the active field of emotional components. All differentiated functions are liable to be disturbed by them, but the disturbance is most evident in the case of thinking, which is by nature opposed to feeling and even more to emotionality. — Erich Neumann

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

Any content that functions through its emotional dynamisms, such as the paralyzing grip of inertia or an invasion by instinct, belongs to the sphere of the mother, to nature. But all contents capable of conscious realization, a value, an idea, a moral canon, or some other spiritual force, are related to the father-, never to the mother-system. — Erich Neumann

The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that. — Franz Ernst Neumann

General George C. Marshall's words, making "sacrifices today in order that we may enjoy security and peace tomorrow" (qtd. in Neumann 1953, 549).9 The claim was either a mistake or a lie, however, because the U.S. government did not need to go to war, not even in the world wars, to preserve its people's essential liberties and their way of life. Neither Kaiser Wilhelm's forces nor Hitler's - and certainly not Japan's - had the capacity to deprive Americans of their liberties, to "take over the country," to "destroy our way of life," or to do anything of the sort. This country has always contained persecuted minorities, and it still does, but since 1789 the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people's liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. U.S. participation in World War I was — Robert Higgs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe in Hilbert space anymore. — John Von Neumann

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

I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers. — John Von Neumann

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

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

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. — John Von Neumann

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

The day after the assignation with Barstad, the low stacked-heels of Charlotte Neumann, an ordained Episcopalian priest, author of New Art Modalities: Woman/Sin, Sin/Woman, S/in/ister, which, the week before, had broken through the top-10,000 barrier of the Barnes & Noble on-line bestseller list, and who was, not incidentally, the department chairperson, echoed down the hallway and stopped at his door. — John Sandford

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

On the lowest level, this loss of soul turns the man into the hen-pecked husband who lives with his wife as though she were his mother upon whom he is solely dependent in all things having to do with emotions and the inner life. But even the relatively positive case where the woman is the mistress of the inner domain and mother of the home who simultaneously has the responsibility for dealing with all the man's questions and problems having to do with emotions and the inner life, even this leads to a lack of emotional vitality and sterile one-sidedness in the man. He discharges only the "outer" and "rational" affairs of life, profession, politics, etc. Owing to his loss of soul, the world he has shaped becomes a patriarchal world that, in its soullessness, presents an unprecedented danger for humanity. In this context we cannot delve further into the significance of a full development of the archetypal feminine potential for a new, future society. — Erich Neumann

Where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge. — David Brin

By and large it is uniformly true that in mathematics there is a time lapse between a mathematical discovery and the moment it becomes useful; and that this lapse can be anything from 30 to 100 years, in some cases even more; and that the whole system seems to function without any direction, without any reference to usefulness, and without any desire to do things which are useful. — John Von Neumann

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

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

This original tie with the body as with something "peculiarly one's own" is the basis of all individual development. Later the ego relates to the body, to its superior powers, and to the unconscious - with which its processes are largely identified - in a different and even contrary way. As the higher principle working through the head and consciousness, the ego comes into conflict with the body, and this conflict sometimes leads to a neurotic, partial dissociation which, however, is only the product of a later overdifferentiation. — Erich Neumann

I am a little troubled about the tea service in the electronic computer building. Apparently the members of your staff consume several times as much supplies as the same number of people do in Fuld Hall and they have been especially unfair in the matter of sugar ... I should like to raise the question whether it would not be better for the computer people to come up to Fuld Hall at the end of the day at 5 o'clock and have their tea here under proper supervision. — John Von Neumann

The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer. — Paul R. Halmos

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