One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor ... is to discourage ... from expecting too much from mathematics. Norbert Wiener More Quotes by Norbert Wiener More Quotes From Norbert Wiener Am I really a good mathematician? Norbert Wiener mathematician The simplest type of breakdown exhibits itself as an oscillation in a goal-seeking process which appears only when that process is actively invoked. Norbert Wiener typegoalprocess A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation. Norbert Wiener chess-gamesuccessfulgames The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. Norbert Wiener logicfieldsmath A professor is one who can speak on any subject - for precisely fifty minutes. Norbert Wiener engineeringmathscience In all important respects, the man who has nothing but his physical power to sell has nothing to sell which it is worth anyone's money to buy Norbert Wiener he-manimportantmen Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. Norbert Wiener economicslave-laboraccepting The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with information. Norbert Wiener informationwarideas The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation. Norbert Wiener gamesmathsuccess the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine Norbert Wiener machinescommunicationanimal I may remark parenthetically that the modern apparatus of the theory of small samples, once it goes beyond the determination of its own specially defined parameters and becomes a method for positive statistical inference in new cases, does not inspire me with any confidence unless it is applied by a statistician by whom the main elements of the dynamics of the situation are either explicitly known or implicitly felt. Norbert Wiener determinationmayinspire Mathematics is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. Norbert Wiener momentsfieldschess
