Von Neumann Quotes

“There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn’t say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.”
― George Pólya

“The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer.”
― Paul R. Halmos

“Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.”
― Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts

“Most people avoid thinking if they can, some of us are addicted to thinking, but Von Neumann actually enjoyed thinking, maybe even to the exclusion of everything else.”
― Edward Teller

“He was "a magician, a magician in the sense that he took what was given and simply forced the conclusions logically out of it, whether it was algebra, geometry, or whatever. He had some way of forcing out the results that made him different from the rest of the people." Israel Halperin about von Neumann”
― Robert Leonard, Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory: From Chess to Social Science, 1900–1960