Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.
Freeman DysonWe have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for people have been the cold periods rather than the warm periods.
Freeman DysonI grew up in England and we spent most of the time on Latin and Greek and very little on science, and I think that was good because it meant we didn't get turned off. It was... Science was something we did for fun and not because we had to.
Freeman DysonIf the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.
Freeman DysonFor me too, the periodic table was a passion. ... As a boy, I stood in front of the display for hours, thinking how wonderful it was that each of those metal foils and jars of gas had its own distinct personality.
Freeman DysonThe world is just - it's wonderful when you look at all the detail. It's just amazing. Nothing is boring if you look at it carefully.
Freeman DysonWhen I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.
Freeman DysonTechnology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.
Freeman DysonWe should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.
Freeman DysonMostly I'm just writing books for the public, and so I try to describe for the public what the choices are, what they might have to expect in the future and so by warning people ahead of time maybe you have an effect.
Freeman DysonIf we want to go to space with humans, that's for fun not for science. Human adventures in space are just sporting events.
Freeman DysonMany of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth.
Freeman DysonA good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.
Freeman DysonThe thing that makes me most optimistic is China and India - both of them doing well. It's amazing how much progress there's been in China, and also India. Those are the places that really matter - they're half of the world's population. They're the places where things are enormously better now than they were 50 years ago. And I don't see anything that's going to stop that.
Freeman DysonI think it's much better to have your eyes open, but on the other hand, of course it can do harm if you tell people look, there's all these terrible things you can do and then some idiot may go ahead and do it.
Freeman DysonClimate change is part of the normal order of things, and we know it was happening before humans came.
Freeman DysonAnd somehow mother nature manages to create this incredible biosphere, to create this incredibly rich environment of animals and plants with this amazingly small amount of data.
Freeman DysonI just enjoy calculating, and it's an instrument I know how to play. It's almost an athletic performance, in a way. I was just watching the Olympics, and that's how I feel when proving a theorem.
Freeman DysonThe laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.
Freeman Dyson