Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. – Freeman Dyson
It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology. – Freeman Dyson
Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. – Freeman Dyson
Just because you see pictures of glaciers falling into the ocean doesn’t mean anything bad is happening. This is something that happens all the time. It’s part of the natural cycle of things. We know from measurements that glaciers have been melting for 200 years at least. – Freeman Dyson
The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs. – Freeman Dyson
Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science. – Freeman Dyson
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. – Freeman Dyson
Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth. – Freeman Dyson
It’s not going to be just humans colonizing space, it’s going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe. – Freeman Dyson
The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. – Freeman Dyson
The biologists have essentially been pushed aside. Al Gore’s just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers. – Freeman Dyson
The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people’s hopes. – Freeman Dyson
I don’t think of myself predicting things. I’m expressing possibilities. Things that could happen. To a large extent it’s a question of how badly people want them to. – Freeman Dyson
It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment. – Freeman Dyson
Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. – Freeman Dyson
The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence. – Freeman Dyson
The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models. They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models. – 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
You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God’s mind? – Freeman Dyson
Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles. – Freeman Dyson
