John Von Neumann Quotes

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

Furthermore, it's equally evident that what goes on is actually one degree better than self-reproduction, for organisms appear to have gotten more elaborate in the course of time. Today's organisms are phylogenetically descended from others which were vastly simpler than they are, so much simpler, in fact, that it's inconceivable, how any kind of description of the latter, complex organism could have existed in the earlier one. It's not easy to imagine in what sense a gene, which is probably a low order affair, can contain a description of the human being which will come from it. But in this case you can say that since the gene has its effect only within another human organism, it probably need not contain a complete description of what is to happen, but only a few cues for a few alternatives. However, this is not so in phylogenetic evolution. That starts from simple entities, surrounded by an unliving amorphous milieu, and produce, something more complicated. Evidently, these organisms have the ability to produce something more complicated than themselves. ~ John Von 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

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

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

Kurt Gödel'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 Gödel's achievement." - John von Neumann ~ John Von Neumann

A system of logical instructions that an automaton can carry out and which causes the automaton to perform some organized task is called a code. ~ John Von Neumann

In this sense, an object is of the highest degree of complexity if it can do very difficult and involved things. ~ 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 is only proper to realize that language is largely a historical accident. ~ John Von Neumann

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

Computers are like humans - they do everything except think. ~ 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

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

There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann. ~ George Polya

A large part of mathematics which becomes useful developed with absolutely no desire to be useful, and in a situation where nobody could possibly know in what area it would become useful; and there were no general indications that it ever would be so. ~ John Von Neumann

An element which stimulates itself will hold a stimulus indefinitely. ~ 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

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

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

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

Can we survive technology? ~ John Von Neumann

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

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

THE VASTNESS OF OUR MEMORY
Holography also explains how our brains can store so many memories in so little space. The brilliant Hungarian-born physicist and mathematician John von Neumann once calculated that over the course of the average human lifetime, the brain stores something on the order of 2. 8 x 1020 (280, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000) bits of information. This is a staggering amount of information, and brain researchers have long struggled to come up with a mechanism that explains such a vast capability. Interestingly, holograms also possess a fantastic capacity for information storage. By changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. Any image thus recorded can be retrieved simply by illuminating the film with a laser beam possessing the same angle as the original two beams. By employing this method researchers have calculated that a one-inch-square of film can store the same amount of information contained in fifty Bibles! ~ Michael Talbot

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

When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

For generations, field guides to plants and animals have sharpened the pleasure of seeing by opening our minds to understanding. Now John Adam has filled a gap in that venerable genre with his painstaking but simple mathematical descriptions of familiar, mundane physical phenomena. This is nothing less than a mathematical field guide to inanimate nature. ~ Hans Christian Von Baeyer

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

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

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

Hildegard von Bingen conveys spiritual ecstasy, if we're talking of Western music. What bothers me about Western music is that it doesn't have an esoteric dimension in the way the music of the East has, whether it be Byzantine chant, the music of the Sufis, or Hindu music. ~ John Tavener

As (the Soviet newspaper) Pravda said in 1951,"If ever the spy Allen Dulles should arrive in Heaven through somebody's absent-mindedness, he would begin to blow up the clouds, mine the stars, and slaughter the angels." Allen Dulles cared little for the methods that were used to accomplish the secret projects he funded. Proof of this is clear when you look at his attempts in 1950 to convince John McCloy to intervene in General Alexander von Falkenhausen's trial. Von Falkenhausen had executed hostages in Belgium throughout the war and ordered the deportation of 25,000 Jews to death camps. Von Falkenhausen drew a twelve-year sentence but was freed after three weeks. ~ Carol Rutz

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

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

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

In fact a favourite problem of Tyndall is - Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

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

Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.' ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

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

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

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

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

There's a cellular automaton called TVC. After Turing, von Neumann and Chiang. Chiang's version was N-dimensional. That leaves plenty of room for data within easy reach. In two dimensions, the original von Neumann machine had to reach further and further - and wait longer and longer - for each successive bit of data. In a six-dimensional TVC automaton, you can have a three-dimensional grid of computers, which keeps on growing indefinitely - each with its own three-dimensional memory, which can also grow without bound.

And when the simulated TVC universe being run on the physical computer is suddenly shut down, the best explanation for what I've witnessed will be a continuation of that universe - an extension made out of dust. Maria could almost see it: a vast lattice of computers, a seed of order in a sea of random noise, extending itself from moment to moment by sheer force of internal logic, "accreting" the necessary building blocks from the chaos of non-space-time by the very act of defining space and time. ~ Greg Egan

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

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

In Mary this petition has been granted: she is, as it were, the open vessel of longing, in which life becomes prayer and prayer becomes life. Saint John wonderfully conveys this process by never mentioning Mary's name in his Gospel. She no longer has any name except "the Mother of Jesus".1 It is as if she had handed over her personal dimension, in order now to be solely at his disposal, and precisely thereby had become a person. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

As the years go by, the circle of the Ojibway gets bigger and bigger. Canadians of all colours and religion are entering that circle. You might feel that you have roots somewhere else, but in reality, you are right here with us. I do not know if you feel the throbbing of the land in your chest, and if you feel the bear is your brother with a spirit purer and stronger than yours, or if the elk is on a higher level of life than is man. You may not share the spiritual anguish as I see the earth ravaged by the stranger, but you can no longer escape my fate as the soil turns barren and the rivers poison. Much against my will, and probably yours, time and circumstance have put us together in the same circle. And so I come not to plead with you to save me from the monstrous stranger of capitalist greed and technology. I come to inform you that my danger is your danger too. My genocide is your genocide. ~ John Ralston Saul

I'm used to coming up with a lot of parts. And I don't have to do that so much [with Divine Fits]. This is the kind of band I've always wanted to be in because we never set up any aesthetic rules when we started it. We just wrote and edited, and it ended up sounding like Divine Fits. ~ John Britt Daniel

There is nothing strange, creepy, or inappropriate about John Travolta . ~ Scarlett Johansson

Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit. ~ John Selden

At a moment when distortions of Islam are what feed most Americans, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin has done something both practical and inspiring. He persuades us that the imperiled environment is both common struggle and common ground for people who share, it turns out, more than simply God. ~ John Hockenberry

Art is the provocation for talking about enigma and the search for sense in human life. One can do that by telling a story or writing about a fresco by Giotto or studying how a snail climbs up a wall. ~ John Berger

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images. ~ David Lynch

Men of learning began to set experiments aside ... to form theories ... and to substitute these in the place of experiments. ~ John Wesley

but now we see that the subject controls the time of its environment. While we said before, "There can be no living subject without time," now we shall have to say, "Without a living subject, there can be no time. ~ Jakob Johann Von Uexkull

That the public library is a part of the educational system should never be lost sight of in the work of establishing it, or in its management. To the great mass of the people it comes as their first and only educational opportunity. ~ John Cotton Dana

By God!' he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, 'it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle. ~ John Buchan

Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys? ~ John Steinbeck

It is hardily credible of how great consequences before God the smallest things are; and what great inconveniences some times follow those which appear to be light faults. ~ John Wesley

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it. ~ John Waters

You will either offend the world and please God, or please the world and offend God. ~ John Hagee

May I live this day ... Compassionate of heart, / Gentle in word, / Gracious in awareness / Courageous in thought, / Generous in love / Eternal Echoes ~ John O'Donohue

Learning how to face fear really makes you invincible because you stop being scared. ~ Alexa Von Tobel

God has clothed His thoughts in words, and there is no way to know Him except by knowing the Scriptures. ~ John Stott

I had not imagined you to have such a story to tell - you Australians are mysterious people, no one would guess that this is a place where people can also suffer. It is the constant sunshine, it hides everything but itself. ~ Madeleine St. John

If our principal treasure be as we profess, in things spiritual and heavenly, and woe unto us if it be not so! on them will our affections, and consequently our desires and thoughts, be principally fixed. ~ John Owen

Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away ~ Ludwig Von Mises

But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.
Instead I had Hell. ~ John Marsden