Mathematics is too arduous and uninviting a field to appeal to those to whom it does not give great rewards. These rewards are of exactly the same ch… - Norbert Wiener

The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

It is my thesis that machines can and do transcend some of the limitations of their designers... although they are theoretically subject to human criticism, such criticism may be ineffective until a time long after it is relevant. By the very slowness of our human activities, our effective control of our machines may be nullified. If the rules for victory in a war game do not correspond to what we actually wish for our country, it is more likely that such a machine may produce a policy which will win a nominal victory on points, at the cost of every interest we have at heart, even that of national survival.

The measures taken during the war by our military agencies, in restricting the free intercourse among scientists on related projects or even on the same project have gone so far that it is clear that if continued in time of peace, this policy will lead to the total irresponsibility of the scientist, and, ultimately, to the death of science. ...The interchange of ideas, which is one of the greatest traditions of science, must of course receive certain limitations when the scientist becomes an arbiter of life and death. ...