Home / Authors / Stanislaw Ulam

Stanislaw Ulam

Stanislaw Ulam Quotes

Mathematician

Stanislaw Ulam was a renowned mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematics, physics, and computer science. Born on April 13, 1909, and passing away on May 13, 1984, Ulam's research had a profound impact on the development of nuclear weapons, stochastic process theory, and computer science.

Filter quotes by topic

All Mathematics Years Feels Knows Littles May Stills Way Ability Able

Famous Stanislaw Ulam Quotes

“The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.”

Knows Littles Deals Mathematician Physicist

Author: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.”

World Feels Ideas Sometimes Seems Force This World Horror Invisible Tolerate Muse Agnostic

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

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

Loses Challenges Mathematics Fortresses

Author: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.”

Feels Years Wells Stills Sometimes Reading Happened Lifetime Rational Fallen Explanation Thirteen Thirteen Year Olds

Author: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.”

Thinking Two Hard Problem Three Felt Hours Produce Strange Severe Three Times Fatigue Breakdown

Author: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.”

Years Realizing Groups Scientist Mathematical Melancholy

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“Ada came from Lwów. She was a very good looking girl who was studying mathematics at the University of Geneva. For a few years I had an off-and-on romance with her.”

Years Romance Girl Study Mathematics University Very Good Looking Good Geneva Ada Studying Mathematics

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me.”

Taken Mathematics Possession

Author: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.”

Ifs Giving Trying Important Creative Willing Giving Up Optimist Not Giving Up Pessimist Willing To Try

Author: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.”

Self Interest Ability Absolutes Mathematics Following Insight Complicated Brilliant Self Confidence Supreme Reasoning Broads Efficient Mathematician Virtuosity Von Neumann

Author: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.”

Members Hundred Pairs Professors Surprising Sixty Eighteen

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.”

Moments Chance Depends Mathematics Physics

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

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

Certain Special Accomplish Technique Amazed Facility

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“There may be such a thing as habitual luck. People who are said to be lucky at cards probably have certain hidden talents for those games in which skill plays a role. It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck".”

People May Doe Said Play Certain Games Ability Roles Talent Lucky Skills Luck Surface Physics Cards Habitual Parameters Hidden Talents

Author: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.”

Memories Fields Civilization Mathematics Obvious Thanks Greek Pleasant Latin Colleagues Roman Civilization

Author: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.”

Ifs World Feelings Imagine Nuclear Dozen Radiation Precise Manipulate Calculating

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“I was still very hopeful that much work lay ahead of me. Perhaps because much of what I had worked on or thought about had not yet been put into writing, I felt I still had things in reserve. Given this optimistic nature, I feel this way even now when I am past sixty.”

Way Feels Writing Stills Past Given Felt Lays Optimistic Hopeful Sixty Reserves

Author: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?”

Should Has Beens Technology Impossible Terrible Consequence Mathematics Invention Simplest Calculations Calculus

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“According to recent studies, at least one star out of three is multiple.”

Three Stars Study Multiple

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“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.”

Years Country Lasts Ten Hundred Incredibles Russia Explanation Yards Coincidence Boulders

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else.”

Mathematics Defining Exactly Is

Author: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.”

Results Brain Changed Evolution Ten Connections Accidents Billions Nervous Organs Primitive Nervous System Neurons

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

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

Matter Elegant Theorems

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“Thoughts are steered in different ways.”

Way Different Different Ways

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“I am turned off when I see only formulas and symbols, and little text.”

Littles Symbols Formulas Turned Off

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain.”

Way May Brain Connections Mathematics Developing

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“Rota's personality is compatible with mine.”

Science Mines Personality Mathematics Compatible

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“Knowing what is big and what is small is more important than being able to solve partial differential equations.”

Important Bigs Able Knowing Solve Equations Differential Equations

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“The infinite we shall do right away. The finite may take a little longer.”

May Littles Infinite Mathematics Finite

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else. Roughly speaking, people know that it deals with numbers, figures, with relations, operations, and that its formal procedures involving axioms, proofs, lemmas, theorems have not changed since the time of Archimedes.”

People Knows Deals Numbers Figures Changed Relation Mathematics Proof Operations Formal Defining Procedures Involving Axioms Theorems Exactly Is

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“... there's nothing new under the sun - everything can be traced back to Archimedes or even earlier.”

Sun Nothing New Nothing New Under The Sun

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs.”

Humans Stills Courses Change Pieces Source Paper Surprise Affair Unending Scribbles Blackboard

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.”

Book:Science, Computers, and People: From the Tree of Mathematics

Source: Science, Computers, and People: From the Tree of Mathematics

“One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

Knows Giving Humans Race Technology Progress Conversation Essentials Affair Appearance Human Life Singularity

Author: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.”

Reality Mathematics Mathematical

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“He [John von Neumann] had the invaluable faculty of being able to take the most difficult problem and separate it into its components, whereupon everything looked brlliantly simple.”

Problem Able Difficult Simple Learning Programming Faculty Components Invaluable Difficult Problems Von Neumann

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

About the Author

Born: April 13, 1909
Died: May 13, 1984
Known for: Mathematician
Quotes: 36

Related Topics

Mathematics Years Feels Knows Littles May Stills Way Ability Able

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Science, Computers, and People: From the Tree of MathematicsRelated source material

Similar Authors

William MaceBrowse related quotes
Gian-Carlo RotaBrowse related quotes
David MumfordBrowse related quotes
Eric Temple BellBrowse related quotes
G. H. HardyBrowse related quotes
Paul HalmosBrowse related quotes
Lipman BersBrowse related quotes
Edward KasnerBrowse related quotes
Hermann WeylBrowse related quotes
Julio Cesar de Mello e SouzaBrowse related quotes