John von Neumann

"The challenge is to find the signal amid the noise."

"Innovation requires a willingness to be wrong."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

"Complexity is the price we pay for progress."

"The human mind is the greatest computer that has ever been invented."

"Understanding systems requires understanding their structure and function."

"The goal of science is not to answer all questions, but to ask better ones."

"Elegance is not a luxury but a necessity in mathematics."

"The future belongs to those who understand it first."

"Never assume that what you know is all that can be known."

"The power of a principle is its ability to generate new understanding."

"In mathematics, we work with abstractions; in life, with reality."

"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena."

"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

"As we ascend the scale of life, we find it increasingly necessary to rely on the principle that our thoughts are not our own, but impressions left by our mentors."

"The task of the architect of the future is not so much the forward planning of physical needs as an understanding of the true nature of human growth and development."

"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."

"You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feeling for numbers."

"The study of the structure of atoms and molecules is increasingly revealing the beautiful harmony and order underlying all natural phenomena."

"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements."

"The problems of this world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities of the moment."

"One cannot proceed indefinitely by spiraling criticism. Criticism must be constructive, or it sounds no better than a whine."

"It is just as foolish to complain that people are moody and inconsistent as to complain that the weather is fickle. Both are human characteristics and one has to learn to live with them."

"The development of high speed electronic calculating machines was an inevitable event in the history of applied mathematics."

"I would not have attempted a task of this magnitude without the most thorough preparation and planning."

"The fact that we can discover these laws indicates that nature possesses a degree of mathematical beauty that is to be expected in the work of a creator of infinite wisdom."

"Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

"A problem well stated is a problem half solved."

"The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way."