Freeman Dyson Quotes

Author Image

Freeman Dyson

Profession : Physicist

Birth : December 15, 1923

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

I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.

Freeman Dyson

I don't believe in technological determinism, especially not in biology and medicine. We have strong laws to keep doctors from monkeying around with humans that will remain in place. It's simply not true that everything that is technologically possible gets done.

Freeman 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

It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.

Freeman Dyson

I like people who are working on practical things and who are working in teams. It's not so important to get the glory. It's much more important to get something that works. It's a better way to live.

Freeman Dyson

If you start out with a tragic view of life, then anything since is just a bonus.

Freeman Dyson

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.

Freeman Dyson

The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don't have PhDs.

Freeman Dyson

You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?

Freeman Dyson

I don't think of myself predicting things. I'm expressing possibilities. Things that could happen. To a large extent it's a question of how badly people want them to.

Freeman Dyson

The biologists have essentially been pushed aside. Al Gore's just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers.

Freeman Dyson

Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.

Freeman Dyson

I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.

Freeman Dyson

Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.

Freeman Dyson

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

Freeman Dyson

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

It's as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand them. John Randall wasn't a great scientist, but he was a great inventor. There's been lots more like him, and it's a shame they don't get Nobel Prizes.

Freeman Dyson

What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.

Freeman Dyson

The fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn't scare me at all. There's no reason why one should be scared.

Freeman Dyson