Freeman Dyson

The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.

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

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

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.

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?

Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.

It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.

It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology.

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

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.

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.