Stanislaw Ulam

"According to recent studies, at least one star out of three is multiple."

"What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else."

"It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is."

"I am turned off when I see only formulas and symbols, and little text."

"Im an agnostic. Sometimes I muse deeply on the forces that are for me invisible. When I am almost close to the idea of God, I feel immediately estranged by the horrors of this world, which he seems to tolerate..."

"Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep."

"It is still an unending source of surprise for me to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could change the course of human affairs."

"I thought that the description of Don Quixotes fight with the windmills the funniest thing imaginable."

"Thinking very hard about the same problem for several hours can produce a severe fatigue, close to a breakdown. I never really experienced a breakdown, but have felt "strange inside" two or three times during my life."

"It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me."

"Ada came from Lwów. She was a very good looking girl who was studying mathematics at the University of Geneva. For a few years I had an off-and-on romance with her."

"Even the simplest calculation in the purest mathematics can have terrible consequences. Without the invention of the infinitesimal calculus most of our technology would have been impossible. Should we say therefore that calculus is bad?"