Brian Hayes Quotes

Fretting about a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up its last reserves of ignorance.

If saving human lives is the great desideratum, then there is more to be gained by the prevention of drowning, and auto wrecks than by the abolition of war.

The absence of a golden rule for mattress flipping is a disappointment, but it does not pertend the demise of civilization. We can adapt; we can learn to live with it.

A retired physicist reading the Encyclopedia Britannica can do just so much toward securing world peace.

I am reminded of those prodigies who spent years of their lives calculating digits of the decimal expansion of <math>pi</math> - a task that is now a mere warm-up exercise for computer software. I cannot help wandering which of my labors will appear equally quaint and pathetic to some future reader who ransacks libraries for old volumes like this one.

Compared with the elegant inventions of the theorists, nature's code seemed a bit of a kludge.