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" 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
Possibilities
Myself
People
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" 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
Together
Science
Language
" 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. "
Freeman Dyson
Good
Engineering
Person
" 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
People
Better
Glory
" 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
Environmental
Think
People
" If you start out with a tragic view of life, then anything since is just a bonus. "
Freeman Dyson
Just
You
Anything
" It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe. "
Freeman Dyson
Universe
Moving
Life
" It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment. "
Freeman Dyson
Human
Without
Problems
" 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. "
Freeman Dyson
God
Technology
Mother
" The marketplace judges technologies by their practical effectiveness, by whether they succeed or fail to do the job they are designed to do. "
Freeman Dyson
Judges
Practical
Fail
" The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models. They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models. "
Freeman Dyson
Forget
People
Believe
" The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes. "
Freeman Dyson
Hopes
Thinking
Purpose
" 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
Evil
System
Real
" The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence. "
Freeman Dyson
Space
Intelligence
Destiny
" I'm a mathematician, basically. What I do is look around for problems where I can find useful applications for mathematics. All I do, really, is the math, and other people have the ideas. "
Freeman Dyson
Mathematics
Ideas
People
" 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
Important
Animals
Plants
" 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
Most
Wealth
Human
" Just because you see pictures of glaciers falling into the ocean doesn't mean anything bad is happening. This is something that happens all the time. It's part of the natural cycle of things. We know from measurements that glaciers have been melting for 200 years at least. "
Freeman Dyson
You
Ocean
Know
" Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist. "
Freeman Dyson
Good
Journalist
Important
" 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
Business
People
Now
" 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. "
Freeman Dyson
Physics
Biology
Say
" 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
Science
Now
Biology
" Lucky individuals in each generation find technology appropriate to their needs. "
Freeman Dyson
Technology
Lucky
Generation
" 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
Global Warming
Responsible
Person
" It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear. "
Freeman Dyson
Than
Life
Live
" Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes. "
Freeman Dyson
Aviation
Engineering
Mistakes
" 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
Technology
Small
Power
" The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility. "
Freeman Dyson
Own
Fall
Believing
" 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
Scare
Why
Scared
" The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. "
Freeman Dyson
Problem
Important
Doing
" There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use. "
Freeman Dyson
Great
Tools
Building