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Five Quotes

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Five Quotes

“We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it”

“Even the standard example of ancient nonsense - the debate about angels on pinheads - makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.”

“Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year's time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number for red five and blue five. We could marshal the world's best minds and fastest computers, and within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded the Ramsey number for red six and blue six, however, we would have no choice but to launch a preemptive attack.”

“In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "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." With that, the conversation was over.”

“I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.”

“Don't let your present problems defeat you. The Chinese have a saying that if you live with a disaster for three years it will turn into a blessing. Look back in your own life at what appeared to be a devastating situation five or ten years ago. Many of those situations were the turning point that caused a number of great things to happen in your future. Regardless of what happens today, realize it is the beginning of something good.”

“It's pretty simple, the way I look at it. I became a Hall of Famer here (in New York), with my numbers here and what I've done here, and hopefully three-hundred will be another big part of that. When (former Red Sox general manager Dan) Duquette said that I was done, if I'd have taken his advice and went home, I wouldn't have been a Hall of Famer. So it's a no-brainer. It's definitely pretty easy. Reggie (Jackson) spent five years here, and this will be five for me.”

“As a kid, I would do all of the plays at my school, and I was notorious for being in five numbers in one show. I'd go onstage, run backstage for a wardrobe change, and then go back out onstage. I'm always trying to do more than I should but when I got my lucky break (or whatever it's called), I was prepared because I studied and worked really hard for it.”

“Human beings, because we're so clever, have removed every single one of those population limiting factors... So nothing controls our increase in numbers except our own wish. Since I first started making television programs, the population of the world has increased three times. That's an extraordinary notion. Can it increase four times? Can it increase five times? The Earth is a finite size. So a point will eventually come when we run out of food, when we run out of space and when we will have destroyed most of the natural world. So ought we to do something about it before that happens?”

“When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, the Left was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute, and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted number in Islamabad in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the Left couldn't care less.”