FREEMAN DYSON

The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.

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.

I don't believe in technological determinism, especially not in biology and medicine. We have strong laws to keep doctors from monkeying around with humans that will remain in place. It's simply not true that everything that is technologically possible gets done.

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.

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

Lucky individuals in each generation find technology appropriate to their needs.

The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.

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

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.

The marketplace judges technologies by their practical effectiveness, by whether they succeed or fail to do the job they are designed to do.

The pain of childbirth is not remembered. It's the child that's remembered.

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.

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.

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.

It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.

I like people who are working on practical things and who are working in teams. It's not so important to get the glory. It's much more important to get something that works. It's a better way to live.

The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm.

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.

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?

What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.

Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.

The world of science and the world of literature have much in common. Each is an international club, helping to tie mankind together across barriers of nationality, race and language. I have been doubly lucky, being accepted as a member of both.

I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.

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.

The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility.