63 Quotes by Richard Hamming

Good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system.

The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together.

It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.

You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.

I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable.

Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes.

There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.

Typing is no substitute for thinking.

If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you dont quite know what problems are worth working on.