Quotes & Sayings About Von Neumann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If it had been up to Von Neumann's purely intellectual reasoning alone, many of the bombs he helped to create would have exploded on the Soviet Union.Thankfully, there was another thinker on hand whose deeper grasp of human foibles added a new dimension to game theory that, among other things, helped save the world from mutually assured destruction. Enter Thomas Schelling. — Tim Harford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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

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

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

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 - that is correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area. Furthermore, it must satisfy certain esthetic criteria - that is, in relation to how much it describes, it must be rather simple. — John Von Neumann

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. — John Von 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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