Stanislaw Ulam Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

Do not lose your faith. A mighty fortress is our mathematics. Mathematics will rise to the challenge, as it always has.

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.

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.

Stanislaw Ulam
It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is.

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.

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.

Stanislaw Ulam
Thinking very hard about the same problem for several hours can produce a severe fatigue, close to a breakdown. I never really experienced a breakdown, but have felt "strange inside" two or three times during my life.

Stanislaw Ulam
I am always amazed how much a certain facility with a special and apparently narrow technique can accomplish.

Stanislaw Ulam