The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together.
Interpretation
The joy of achieving a significant technical innovation surpasses the pleasures of life.
Richard Hamming emphasizes that the emotional high experienced during a groundbreaking moment in technology is unparalleled and greater than any worldly pleasures, such as food, companionship, or music. This quote highlights the profound satisfaction and excitement that come from intellectual achievements and innovation.
In practice
A speaker at a tech conference highlighting the thrill of innovation.
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.
Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.
Beware of finding what you're looking for._x000D_ _x000D_ A favorite aphorism he often used.
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after is has happened; but only the wise man knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable.
All thought is a feat of association; having what's in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn't know you knew
I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it
Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.
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