Stanislaw Ulam quotes

By an incredible coincidence, Gamow and Edward Condon, who had discovered simultaneously and independently the explanation of radioactivity (one in Russia, the other in this country), came to spend the the last ten years of their lives within a hundred yards of each other in Boulder. (Stanislaw Ulam)
I am always amazed how much a certain facility with a special and apparently narrow technique can accomplish. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
I'm an agnostic. Sometimes I muse deeply on the forces that are for me invisible. When I am almost close to the idea of God, I feel immediately estranged by the horrors of this world, which he seems to tolerate... View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
I am turned off when I see only formulas and symbols, and little text. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Even the simplest calculation in the purest mathematics can have terrible consequences. Without the invention of the infinitesimal calculus most of our technology would have been impossible. Should we say therefore that calculus is bad? View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain. (Stanislaw Ulam)
The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Thanks to my memory, which enabled me to quote Latin and to discuss Greek and Roman civilization, it became obvious to some of my colleagues in other fields that I was interested in things outside mathematics. This lead quickly to very pleasant relationships. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
According to recent studies, at least one star out of three is multiple. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
For many years I was the youngest among my mathematical friends. It makes me melancholy to realize that I now have become the oldest in most groups of scientists. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
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. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to "try" more than if you are a pessimist. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Do not lose your faith. A mighty fortress is our mathematics. Mathematics will rise to the challenge, as it always has. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
In its evolution from a more primitive nervous system, the brain, as an organ with ten or more billion neurons and many more connections between them must have changed and grown as a result of many accidents. (Stanislaw Ulam)
Thoughts are steered in different ways. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
Very soon I discovered that if one gets a feeling for no more than a dozen other radiation and nuclear constants, one can imagine the subatomic world almost tangibly, and manipulate the picture dimensionally and qualitatively, before calculating more precise relationships. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
With sixty professors there are roughly eighteen hundred pairs of professors. Out of that many pairs it was not surprising that there were some whose members did not like one another. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
It is still an unending source of surprise for me to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could change the course of human affairs. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam