Top 15 Richard Hamming Quotes

The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.

What you learn from others you can use to follow.
What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.

Beware of finding what you're looking for.

[A favorite aphorism he often used.]

I need to discuss science vs. engineering. Put glibly:
In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it.

Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.

If you don’t work on important problems, it’s not likely that you'll do important work.

Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures. There are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.

It is not easy to become an educated person.

Moral: to the extent you can choose, work on problems you think will be important.

The applications of knowledge, especially mathematics, reveal the unity of all knowledge. In a new situation almost anything and everything you ever learned might be applicable, and the artificial divisions seem to vanish.

The Buddha told his disciples, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” I say the same to you — you must assume the responsibility for what you believe.

Almost everyone who opens up a new field does not really understand it the way the followers do.” The evidence for this is, unfortunately, all too good. It has been said in physics no creator of any significant thing ever understood what he had done.

The reason this happens so often is the creators have to fight through so many dark difficulties, and wade through so much misunderstanding and confusion, they cannot see the light as others can, now the door is open and the path made easy. Please remember, the inventor often has a very limited view of what he invented, and some others (you?) can see much more.

"If you will only ask yourself, "Is what I am being told really true?," it is amazing how much you can find is, or borders on, being false, even in a well-developed field!"

In closing I want to remind you yet again of Pasteur’s remark, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” Yes, it is a matter of luck just what you do; it is much less luck you will do something if you prepare yourself to succeed. “Creativity” is just another name for the great successes which make a difference in history.