John von Neumann

"The universe speaks in the language of mathematics, but we are only beginning to understand the grammar."

"Genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in the mind simultaneously and function effectively."

"We create models not to replace reality but to understand it better."

"The paradox of scientific progress is that it makes the world more mysterious, not less."

"Time is not what we think it is; it is a dimension like space."

"To create something new, one must first understand what has come before."

"The future is not something that happens to us; it is something we create through our choices."

"Mathematics provides a window into the mind of God, if God exists."

"The true measure of intelligence is not knowledge but the ability to adapt."

"We are not at the end of science but at its very beginning."

"The laws that govern the very small and the very large may be one and the same."

"Understanding is built upon the foundation of accepted truth, but progress requires challenging that foundation."

"The patterns we see in nature are not imposed by nature but discovered by the mind."

"Every great mathematical truth contains within it the seeds of truths yet to be discovered."

"We must always be prepared to abandon what we know in favor of what we need to learn."

"The universe is finite but unbounded, much like the possibilities of the human mind."

"To be a scientist is to be eternally humble before the mysteries of nature."

"The greatest gift of mathematics is that it teaches us how to think."

"What we call reality is merely the set of patterns our mind is able to perceive."

"The task of the mathematician is to understand the structure of the universe through abstract thought."

"If you wish to foresee the future of mathematics, you must look at its past."

"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models."

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

"Life is a process which may be abstracted from the larger world around us."

"The more we advance in science, the more we realize how much we still don't know."

"Stability can be obtained in a system if there exist appropriate feedback mechanisms."

"A large computation cannot be carried out in any fixed space of time."

"The complexity of any system tends to grow unless actively managed."

"War is a process of mutual destruction, governed by the laws of probability."

"Strategic thinking requires understanding your opponent as well as yourself."