Richard Hamming Quotes

I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think.

… the third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

A 'new thinker', when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought.

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavors to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

Without theory we can only copy.

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

The critical mind is the creative mind.

I think if you study--if you learn too much of what others have done, you may tend to take the same direction as everybody else.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.

Think your own thoughts.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these - it's a state of mind.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…