John von Neumann1903–1957With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
Attributed to von Neumann by Enrico Fermi, as quoted by Freeman Dyson in “A meeting with Enrico Fermi” in Nature 427 (22 January 2004) p. 297- “Various Techniques Used in Connection with Random Digits”, in Monte Carlo Method (1951), ed. A. S. Householder et al.
Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.
Reply to a physicist friend, per Felix T. Smith; as quoted in Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1984 ed.), p. 208n- Keynote, first national ACM meeting (1947), as recalled by Franz L. Alt in Communications of the ACM 15:7 (July 1972), p. 694
