Freeman Dyson - Disturbing the universe (1979)

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

Freeman Dyson
If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.

Freeman Dyson
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.

Freeman Dyson
There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.

Freeman Dyson
The conservative has little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires.

Freeman Dyson
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
Nature's pruning of the unfit will limit the spread of insanity among species in the galaxy, as it does among individuals on earth. Sanity is, in its essence, nothing more than the ability to live in harmony with nature's laws.

Freeman Dyson
The difference between a text without problems and a text with problems is like the difference between learning to read a language and learning to speak it.

Freeman Dyson
When will the third romantic age in the history of spaceflight begin? The third romantic age will see little model sailboats spreading their wings to the sun in space.

Freeman Dyson