“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” 

– P. R. Feynman

“I think the next century will be the century of complexity.” 

– Stephen Hawking

“All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.” 

– John von Neumann

“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.”

– Nikola Tesla

“It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.” 

– John von Neumann

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” 

– Mark Twain 

John von Neumann, the multi-talented mathematician extraordinaire at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, endorsed Zworykin’s view (on weather control), writing to him, “I agree with you completely. . . . This would provide a basis for scientific approach[es] to influencing the weather.” Using ¬computer-¬generated predictions, von Neumann wrote, weather and climate systems “could be controlled, or at least directed, by the release of perfectly practical amounts of energy” or by “altering the absorption and reflection properties of the ground or the sea or the atmosphere.” It was a project that neatly fit von Neumann’s overall philosophy: “All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.” 

– James. R. Fleming

“Fluid mechanics exists as an engineering science separate from the practices of aerodynamics engineers, hydraulic engineers, meteorologists, and many others who use the results of investigations in fluid mechanics in their daily work. In fact, without fluid mechanists, the understanding and the utilization of supersonic flows would certainly be greatly delayed, to say the least.”

 – Tsien Hsue-shen