Incidentally, he was one of the main people behind the invention of Monte Carlo methods for approximating things that were too complicated to calculate exactly.

"God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast.

Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life....upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a man."

--"Inferno I, 32", Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges

(I'm a little curious what LWers will make of this one. Seeing all the variant interpretations is half the fun of these quote threads.)