John von Neumann

1903–1957 · Hungarian and American mathematician and physicist

Topics: mathematics, programming

• Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

  — John von Neumann

• A large part of mathematics which becomes useful developed with absolutely no desire to be useful, and in a situation where nobody could possibly know in what area it would become useful; and there were no general indications that it ever would be so.

  — John von Neumann

• I think that it is a relatively good approximation to truth — which is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations — that mathematical ideas originate in empirics.

  — John von Neumann