Parameters Quotes

• With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

  John von Neumann

  Elephants, Four, Fit

  Attributed to John von Neumann by Enrico Fermi in "A meeting with Enrico Fermi" by Freeman Dyson in "Nature", Issue 427 (p. 297), www.nature.com. January 22, 2004.

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• Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Writing, Science, Fiction

  Interview with David Duncan, www.physics.emory.edu.

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• I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'

  Enrico Fermi

  Elephants, Four, Remember

  "A meeting with Enrico Fermi" by Freeman Dyson, "Nature" Volume 427, p. 297, January 22, 2004.

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• Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. Every great idea I've ever had grew out of work itself. Sign onto a process and see where it takes you. You don't have to invent the wheel everyday. Today you will do what you did yesterday, tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually, you will get somewhere.

  Chuck Close

  Inspiration, Ideas, Yesterday

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• I wanted to have a career in sports when I was young, but I had to give up the idea. I'm only six feet tall, so I couldn't play basketball. I'm only 190 pounds, so I couldn't play football, and I have 20/20 vision, so I couldn't be a referee.

  Jay Leno

  Basketball, Sports, Football

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• Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience.

  Immanuel Kant

  Reason, Should, Declaring

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• It is very difficult to enter a single currency zone having fairly weak economic parameters and maintain a favourable state of the economy, not to mention positive growth rates. We have witnessed it not only in Europe, but for example in Argentina (nearly 10 years ago or more), when they tied the national currency to the dollar and later they did not know what to do about it.

  Vladimir Putin

  Years, Europe, Growth

  Source: thesaker.is

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• I think when you can be supremely self-indulgent sometimes it's easy to get up one's own asshole. I need parameters. I need discipline.

  Justin Broadrick

  Thinking, Self, Discipline

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• We're not trying to harass the average American. We need to convert this now to a risk-based system, with TSA concentrating and focusing on intelligence, on security, setting up again the parameters of which we do this.

  John Mica

  Tsa, Average, Risk

  "TSA gives private security screeners green light in Orlando". "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, www.foxnews.com. June 12, 2012.

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• I don't know the parameters for the Ballon d'Or. I only know that Messi deserves to win every trophy.

  Manuel Pellegrini

  Winning, Messi, Trophies

  "Pellegrini: Messi Deserves to Win Every Individual Honor". Interview with Mark Doyle, www.goal.com. May 03, 2012.

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• I know what I want. I try and convey that at the beginning and set that out, but within those parameters, I'm very happy for them to experiment and try things and give it a go. To me, it's important.

  Dan Mazer

  Giving, Important, Trying

  Source: collider.com

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• There may be such a thing as habitual luck. People who are said to be lucky at cards probably have certain hidden talents for those games in which skill plays a role. It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck".

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Games, Play, Skills

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 119), 1991.

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• The formula for the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem.

  Ehud Olmert

  Numbers, Borders, Jerusalem

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• The usefulness of the models in constructing a testable theory of the process is severely limited by the quickly increasing number of parameters which must be estimated in order to compare the predictions of the models with empirical results.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Numbers, Order, Theory

  Anatol Rapoport, Albert M. Chammah (1965). “Prisoner's Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation”, p.150, University of Michigan Press

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• Pot is great for the abstract, for when you don't have to be regimented and for when you don't need parameters. When you're creating a song, there should never be any parameters, so being high is okay because your mind can wander all over the place.

  Steve "Lips" Kudlow

  Song, Creating, Mind

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I try to be as efficient as possible because in my process, I think that actually helps the work. I like having the pressure of time and money and really trying to stick to the parameters we've been given.

  Christopher Nolan

  Thinking, Trying, Sticks

  Source: collider.com

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• I believe that we as the leader of the Free World must provide important leadership on the ethical parameters, the ethical constraints that this research requires.

  Ron Kind

  Leadership, Believe, Important

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• The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life-different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle choices, levels of psychological stability-mingle so freely.

  Tom Vanderbilt

  Lifestyle Choices, Race, Class

  Tom Vanderbilt (2008). “Traffic”, p.6, Vintage

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• You have to be a brat in order to carve out your parameters, and you have to be a monster to anyone who gets in your way. But sometimes it's difficult to know when that's necessary and when you're just being a baby, throwing your rattle from the cage.

  Paul Thomas Anderson

  Baby, Order, Monsters

  "I can be a real arrogant brat" by Xan Brooks, www.theguardian.com. January 27, 2003.

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• Petrol price is a deregulated commodity, price of which is decided by our oil marketing companies based on input cost and other parameters.

  Veerappa Moily

  Commodity Prices, Oil, Marketing

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• As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer.

  Larry Wall

  Would Be, Routine, Definitions

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• I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don't write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Sex, Writing, Kids

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• So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.

  Jeremy Irons

  Risk, Desire, Fields

  "Jeremy Irons on Courage". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 3, 2005.

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• With Jesus we have 100 percent security, and no one can ever breach the parameters of His love.

  David Jeremiah

  Jesus, His Love, Percent

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• All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Play, Appreciate

  "The Multi-Instrumentalist Returns: A Conversation With Andrew Bird". Interview with Gazelle Emami, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 10, 2011.

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