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

  Immanuel Kant

  Reason, Should, Declaring

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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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• Sadly, one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success.

  Jeremy Irons

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• I've never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that's a different matter. To invent this wizard world, I've learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy. Perhaps much of it I'll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories' internal logic.

  J. K. Rowling

  Book, Order, Magic

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• I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.

  Robert Spencer

  Community, Peaceful, Majority

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• Travel, I was coming to realize, was a metaphor not only for the countless options life offers but also for the fact that choosing one option reduces you to the parameters of that choice. Thus, in knowing my possibilities, I also knew my limitations.

  Rolf Potts

  Knowing, Choices, Facts

  Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.158, Ballantine Books

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• But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all. So screw that.

  Mark Steyn

  Reality, Government, Lines

  Mark Steyn (2014). “The Undocumented Mark Steyn”, p.370, Regnery Publishing

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• I seldom feel trapped by my world. Setting up rules and restrictions is part of the process. It gives your world shape. I always look at these things like haiku: you have to work within certain parameters, but within them, you’re completely free.

  Richard Kadrey

  Giving, Looks, World

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• Analytical tools have their limitations in a turbulent world. These tools work best when parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy.

  John P. Kotter

  Tools, World, Fuzzy

  John P. Kotter, Dan Cohen (2013). “The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations”, p.23, Harvard Business Press

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• In addition to all of the ratios and goals and parameters and bottom lines, it is fundamental that leaders endorse a concept of persons. This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people's gifts and talents and skills. Recognizing diversity gives us the chance to provide meaning, fulfillment and purpose, which are not to be relegated solely to private life any more than such things as love, beauty and joy. The art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.

  Max De Pree

  Art, Lying, Love Is

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• Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Fiction, Limits, Fields

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

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• Without having some kind of parameters placed on a coach, the reality is they could all have a different vision of what a kid's limit is in the heat, ... The policy itself that was adopted by the OSAA executive board gives the coaches some parameters as to how to structure their practices and guidelines to follow.

  Brad Garrett

  Kids, Reality, Practice

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• I don't control the movies that are offered to me, but I make choices based on certain parameters.

  Andy Garcia

  Choices, Certain

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• It's a wonderful thing, as a writer, to be given parameters and walls and barriers.

  Neil Gaiman

  Wall, Wonderful, Given

  "Neil Gaiman Talks DOCTOR WHO Episode “Nightmare in Silver,” Evolving the Cybermen, Creating the Cybermites, His View on the TARDIS and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 8, 2013.

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• I get involved with projects based on three parameters - the script, the actors involved and the director.

  Dominic Monaghan

  Directors, Three, Actors

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• If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

  Alan Perlis

  Procedures, Computing, Ifs

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), pp. 7-13, pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de. September 1982.

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• You have to find a way to not become bitter and live within the parameters of the situation and laugh your way through it…and you hope for a better day for the next generation.

  Yvette Nicole Brown

  Laughing, Generations, Way

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• I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Pain, Hate, Good Things

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness”, p.265, Pan Macmillan

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• A 'living constitution' is a dead constitution, because it does not do the one and only thing a written constitution is supposed to do: provide parameters around the power of officials.

  Kevin Gutzman

  Doe, Constitution, Written

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• I've never seen a candidate - I've never seen a human being - who, with the most limited briefing, can understand the dimensions, the parameters, the nuances of everything of any kind of a policy or political problem.

  James Carville

  Political, Dimensions, Nuance

  "Clinton". www.pbs.org. February 20, 2012.

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• The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  War, World, Classical Music

  Source: www.pbs.org

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