“... the most important questions and insights and goals are unpredictable.”
email sent to David Brown, 1 January 2020, quoted in [Freeman Dyson - Science and Religion (151/157) (comments section), 27 July 2016, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwoVrSICaTA] (published by Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People)
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Freeman Dyson90
theoretical physicist and mathematician 1923Related quotes
Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian
Toynbee, cited in: Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Edward DeLos Myers (1955) A study of history. Vol. 7. p. 388
“Life's most important questions are, for the most part, nothing but probability problems.”
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) French mathematician and astronomer
citation needed
"Les questions les plus importantes de la vie ne sont en effet, pour la plupart, que des problèmes de probabilité."
“The most important questions of life… are indeed for the most part only problems of probability.”
Pierre-Simon Laplace book Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: The most important questions of life... are indeed for the most part only problems of probability. Strictly speaking it may even be said that nearly all our knowledge is problematical; and in the small number of things which we are able to know with certainty, even in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means for ascertaining truth—induction and analogy—are based on probabilities.<!--p.1
“The most important question a human being has to face… What is it? The question, Why are we here?”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
"“Why Are We Here?”, in The Watchtower (2006) http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2006768?q=Elie+Wiesel&p=par
“The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
“Often, in great discovery the most important thing is that a certain question is found.”
Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology
Source: Productive thinking, 1945, p. 123
