New directions in science are launched by new tools much more often than by new concepts. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.

— Freeman Dyson

Freeman Dyson Quotes

We cannot hope to either understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.

— Freeman Dyson

Most of what we see in the universe is dust.

— Freeman Dyson

I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.

— Freeman Dyson

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.

— Freeman Dyson

The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.

— Freeman Dyson

Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as mysterious as a superstring. When something ceases to be mysterious, it ceases to be of absorbing concern to scientists. Almost all the things scientists think and dream about are mysterious.

— Freeman Dyson

For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

— Freeman Dyson

The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.

— Freeman Dyson

There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures.

— Freeman Dyson

Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent.

— Freeman Dyson

If you don’t have a nasty obituary you probably didn’t matter.

— Freeman Dyson

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

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

— Freeman Dyson

If the tools are bad, nature’s voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.

— Freeman Dyson

Science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

— Freeman Dyson

Committees do harm merely by existing.

— Freeman Dyson

As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information.

— Freeman Dyson

Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.

— Freeman Dyson

Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

— Freeman Dyson

That was the wonderful thing about Ramanujan. He discovered so much, and yet he left so much more in his garden for other people to discover.

— Freeman Dyson
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