Wolfram Quotes & Sayings

Well, the first thing to say is that we've worked hard to maintain compatibility, so that any program written with an earlier version of Mathematica can run without change in 3.0, and any notebook can be converted. — Stephen Wolfram

The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress? — Stephen Wolfram

Fear not those who argue, but those who dodge. — Wolfram Von Eschenbach

So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature. — Stephen Wolfram

Answers are what we are trying to get at; search is a process by which you may be able to get answers, but it's not the end goal. It's a mechanism. — Conrad Wolfram

I'm committed to seeing this project done. To see if within this decade we can finally hold in our hands the rule for our universe, and know where our universe lies in the space of all possible universes. — Stephen Wolfram

Calculating does not equal mathematics. It's a subsection of it. In years gone by it was the limiting factor, but computers now allow you to make the whole of mathematics more intellectual. — Conrad Wolfram

Computers do the calculating to allow people to transform the world. — Conrad Wolfram

... you know, sometimes an electric lightbulb goes out all of a sudden. Fizzles, you say. And this burned-out bulb, if you shake it, it flashes again and it'll burn a little longer. Inside the bulb it's a disaster. The wolfram filaments are breaking up, and when the fragments touch, life returns to the bulb. A brief, unnatural, undeniably doomed life - a fever, a too-bright incandescence, a flash. The comes the darkness, life never returns, and in the darkness the dead, incinerated filaments are just going to rattle around. Are you following me? But the brief flash is magnificent!
"I want to shake ...
"I want to shake the heart of a fizzled era. The lightbulb of the heart, so that the broken pieces touch ...
" ... and produce a beautiful, momentary flash ... — Yury Olesha

Any tool can be used badly. — Conrad Wolfram

All the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet ... there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold. — Stephen Wolfram

We never let our people just go. (Joe) What are you? Wolfram and Hart? (Steele) Oh, no, sweetie, they just take your soul for service. We intend to take even more than that. (Tee) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound. — Stephen Wolfram

While researching this answer, I managed to lock up my copy of Mathematica several times on balloon-related differential equations, and subsequently got my IP address banned from Wolfram|Alpha for making too many requests. The ban-appeal form asked me to explain what task I was performing that necessitated so many queries. I wrote, "Calculating how many rental helium tanks you'd have to carry with you in order to inflate a balloon large enough to act as a parachute and slow your fall from a jet aircraft." Sorry, Wolfram. — Randall Munroe

Every math curriculum in the world is based on the idea of hand-calculating, and most of what you're teaching is how to calculate. And I think the resistance to this is very variable. — Conrad Wolfram

Funny thing about straddling fences, though: eventually you end up with a pain in the butt and not much ground covered in any direction. — Logan Wolfram

If I can't understand something, then it's probably nonsense. — Stephen Wolfram

And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?" "Oh, my goodness, yes," said Anna. "He wrote a book you could kill a man with - twelve hundred pages - called A New Kind of Science. It's all about them." "We should totally ask him what he thinks!" Caitlin said. — Robert J. Sawyer

Maths is fundamentally a different process in education than it is in the real world. There is an insistence that we do maths by hand when most of it is done by computers. The idea that you have to do everything by hand before you can operate a computer is nonsense. — Conrad Wolfram

Rocks are computationally equivalent to humans. — Stephen Wolfram

Wolfram," Dan mused, a far-off look in his eye. "I've heard of that from somewhere." Amy was skeptical. "Are you sure you're not thinking of Wolfgang? — Gordon Korman

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and is widely regarded as the most important innovator in scientific and technical computing today. — Stephen Wolfram

It's always seemed like a big mystery how nature, seemingly so effortlessly, manages to produce so much that seems to us so complex. Well, I think we found its secret. It's just sampling what's out there in the computational universe. — Stephen Wolfram

You kind of alluded to it in your introduction. I mean, for the last 300 or so years, the exact sciences have been dominated by what is really a good idea, which is the idea that one can describe the natural world using mathematical equations. — Stephen Wolfram

The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming - the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content. — Stephen Wolfram

It is perhaps a little humbling to discover that we as humans are in effect computationally no more capable than cellular automata with very simple rules. But the Principle of Computational Equivalence also implies that the same is ultimately true of our whole universe.
So while science has often made it seem that we as humans are somehow insignificant compared to the universe, the Principle of Computational Equivalence now shows that in a certain sense we are at the same level as it is. For the principle implies that what goes on inside us can ultimately achieve just the same level of computational sophistication as our whole universe. — Stephen Wolfram

There was much more she would have liked to tell her brother. But within a few months, she would be able to tell him in person. When he learned of the attack on the airship, nothing would stop Archimedes and his wife from coming. But at least they would fly to the Red City instead of Krakentown, where he might be recognized as the smuggler Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste. One day, she might write a story inspired by that part of his career. She would call it The Idiot Smuggler Who Destroyed the Horde Rebellion's War Machines and Changed His Name to Avoid the Rebel Assassins. Zenobia would take pity on the idiot's sister and leave her out of the tale. She — Meljean Brook

One thing is for sure: most of the people admitting candidates to universities for technical subjects are pretty dissatisfied with the level of math education. — Conrad Wolfram

It has been proven that the universe is computationally equivalent to my ego. — Stephen Wolfram

Maths should be more practical and more conceptual, but less mechanical. — Conrad Wolfram

For example, a telegram is a "lightning-letter"; a wireless telegram is a "not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a "self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine". Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China and Japan. — Wolfram Eberhard

The fact that the same symbolic programming primitives work for those as work for math kinds of things, I think, really validates the idea of symbolic programming being something pretty general. — Stephen Wolfram

I couldn't tell you in any detail how my computer works. I use it with a layer of automation. — Conrad Wolfram

There are a few very small incompatible changes - I really doubt most people will ever run into them. — Stephen Wolfram