People From Budapest

"One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't know him when he was a million times faster than most people. When I knew him he was only hundreds of times faster."

"Paul Erdős is the consummate problem solver: his hallmark is the succinct and clever argument, often leading to a solution from "the book". He loves areas of mathematics which do not require an excessive amount of technical knowledge but give scope for ingenuity and surprise. The mathematics of Paul Erdős is the mathematics of beauty and insight."

"Erdős knows about more problems than anybody else, and he not only knows about various problems and conjectures, but he also knows the tastes of various mathematicians. So if I get a letter from him giving me three of his conjectures and two of his problems, then it's sure that these are exactly the kind of conjectures and problems I'm interested in, and these are exactly the kind of questions I may be able to answer. Of course, this applies not only to me, but to everybody else. So Erdős has an amazing ability to match problems with people. Which is why so many mathematicians benefit from his presence. Every letter is likely to inspire you to do some work, or every phone call will give you some problems you are interested in."

"Let n be an integer."

"The first sign of senility is that a man forgets his theorems, the second sign is that he forgets to zip up, the third sign is that he forgets to zip down."

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

"God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers."

"SF means Supreme Fascist — this would show that God is bad. I don't claim that this is correct, or that God exists, but it is just sort of half a joke. … As a joke I said, "What is the purpose of Life?" "Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF's score low." Now, the game with the SF is defined as follows: If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points. If you don't do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point. And if nothing — if you are okay, then no one gets any point. And the aim is to keep the SF's score low."

"This one's from the Book!"

"We'll continue tomorrow — if I live."

"Végre nem butulok tovább"

"It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time."

"If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is."

"My brain is open!"

"Some French socialist said that private property was theft … I say that private property is a nuisance."

"The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans."

"Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education."

"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."

"Everyone knows it takes a woman nine months to have a baby. But you Americans think if you get nine women pregnant, you can have a baby in a month."

"A scientist studies what is, whereas an engineer creates what never was."

"I came to realize that exaggerated concern about what others are doing can be foolish. It can paralyze effort, and stifle a good idea. One finds that in the history of science almost every problem has been worked out by someone else. This should not discourage anyone from pursuing his own path."

"George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, "We have nothing to fear but Fear itself.""

"Alex told me that for many years, his father had not been eager to advertise his Judaism because “this was something he was almost killed for.” But he had always “identified firstly as a Jew,” and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt a solidarity with other minority groups and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. Explaining his father’s motives, he said, “The reason you fight for an open society is because that’s the only society that you can live in, as a Jew — unless you become a nationalist and only fight for your own rights in your own state"."

"Half the day he engages in the most ruthless financial exploitations, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands, even millions. The other half [of the day] he just gives part of it back."

"George Soros has a long and storied track record of being all villains to all people. Nobody that rich, and that meddlesome in international affairs — through his massive, market-influencing hedge-fund bets against national currencies, or via his multi-billion dollar "Open Society" philanthropy in 50-plus countries — could avoid being fitted for devil's horns on a daily basis. ... Until very recently, you could place most of Soros' fiercest critics in categories marked "paranoid" and "anti-democratic." In 1990s Central Europe, where he and his various organizations were ubiquitous presences (at least in the cosmopolitan capital cities), reaction to Soros was a useful if crude indicator of a politician's basic orientation. ... But now, Slavic autocrats have been joined in red-faced George-bashing by two new overlapping groups: American conservatives, and hawkish friends of Israel. ... Thus we now have the spectacle of one of the world's most active and influential anti-communists (not to mention one of its most successful capitalists) being tarred as a particularly dangerous friend of Marx and Lenin."

"George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies," open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but — more important — tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior."

"Aside from very few exceptions like George Soros, I am not impressed by people with money... Becoming rich is not directly a moral achievement."

"[A]lthough Soros did not deliver anything meaningful in his writings, he knew how to handle randomness, by keeping a critical open mind open and changing his opinion with minimal shame ...calling himself fallible ...while others had loftier ideas about themselves. He understood Popper. Do not judge him by his writings. He lived a Popperian life."

"I discovered Karl Popper via [a] trader, perhaps the only one I have ever truly respected. ...I disagreed with his statements when it came to economics and philosophy... [H]is first book, The Alchemy of Finance... does not show much grasp of the concepts. ...One cannot infer much from a single experiment in a random environment... [H]e writes that the category... "economists" believe that things converge to equilibrium... There are plenty of economic theories that believe that departure from a price level can cause further divergence and cause cascading feedback loops. ...say, game theory (...Harsanyi and Nash) or information economics (...Stiglitz, Akerhof, and Spence)."

"I’ve been plying the craft of politics for more than thirty years now, and with my own eyes I’ve seen George Soros attempt to plunder Hungary on three separate occasions. The first time was in the early nineties, when he wanted to buy up all the country’s state debt: all of Hungary’s state debt in the hands of one person, the fate of every Hungarian in the hands of George Soros. It’s spine-chilling even thinking about the situation we managed to avoid. Gratitude and recognition are due to József Antall for preventing this from happening. And I remember 1994, when Soros wanted to plunder us a second time. He tried to acquire OTP Bank, which was then the uniquely dominant Hungarian retail bank. No less spine-chilling is the vision of almost every Hungarian’s money in the hands of one person. Gratitude and recognition are due to Gyula Horn for not allowing that to happen. Today the soaring success of OTP is proof that he was right to do so. Even young people can remember the third attempt. In 2015, people-smuggling networks disguised as human rights organisations brought hundreds of thousands of migrants to the Hungarian border. And when Europe was already straining under the weight of migration, Soros announced that he was ready to offer credit to finance the settlement of one million migrants a year. Please bear in mind that the Soros Plan, the planned settlement of foreign population groups, is still on the agenda: the operation is in progress and we must man the defences, stoutly and unwaveringly."

"Hungary was led to bankruptcy by a government of former communists pursuing liberal policy. This example strengthens the conviction that in fact there is no such thing as a liberal: a liberal is nothing more than a communist with a university degree. If we had taken their advice, right now Hungary would be in the intensive care ward, with the tubes of IMF and Brussels credit attached to every limb. And the fingers on the valves regulating the flow of credit would belong to George Soros. This is no exaggeration."

"All these countries [in East Asia] have spent 40 years trying to build up their economies and a moron like Soros comes along with a lot of money to speculate and ruin things."

"Four hundred seventy-three million to one. Those are the odds against George Soros compiling the investment record he did as manager of the Quantum Fund from 1968 through 1993. His investment record is the most unimpeachable refutation of the random walk hypothesis ever! ... History will probably remember Mr. Soros as the speculator who tilted against the Bank of England in 1992 (and freed the English people from recession). His billion dollar score is simply too compelling a story to overlook. Mr. Soros himself would probably like to be remembered as a great economist or even scientist. But I am going to remember him for something even more important, for which he does not receive the credit he deserves. He is someone who genuinely cares about the state of the human condition and tries to better it. His myriad and monumental philanthropical efforts will qualify him as one of history's great benefactors. ... He is a hands-on workaholic who materially impacts the quality of lives of people less fortunate than he. Now this, this is a sign of greatness."

"The financier George Soros has come to the reflection: 'There are collective interests that don't find expression in market values'.""

"Historically, most highly paid executives voted Republican. No more. ... George Soros was on the leading edge of this trend. Long before he became famous as one of the biggest Democratic donors in history, Soros was best known for getting rich by betting against national currencies, notably the English pound. Soros was considered such a rapacious and unethical practitioner of vulture capitalism that liberal economist Paul Krugman once accused him of intentionally trying to provoke currency crises in order to profit from them. Krugman no longer criticizes Soros, who has gone on to spend billions on behalf of liberal candidates and policy positions around the world."

"Druckenmiller could see that Soros was right: Indeed, this was the man’s genius. Druckenmiller had done the analysis, understood the politics, and seen the trigger for the trade; but Soros was the one who sensed that this was the moment to go nuclear. When you knew you were right, there was no such thing as betting too much. You piled on as hard as possible."

"I've learned many things from him, but perhaps the most significant is that it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."

"We have a booming global economy but we don't have a global society. Markets reduce everything, including human beings and nature, to commodities. Societies need more than this to prosper — such goals as political freedom and social justice."

"I consider Xi Jinping the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world."

"Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback came in India, where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir – a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship."

"China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society."

"‘The EU needs to transform itself into an association that countries like Britain would want to join, in order to strengthen the political case,’ Mr Soros said he was convinced it was the ideal time for the EU to reform itself and prepare the ground for the UK staying inside the bloc."

"Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it."

"So the euro is here to stay, and the arrangements that evolved in response to the crisis have become established as the new order governing the eurozone. This confirms my worst fears. It’s the nightmare I’ve been talking about. I’m hopeful that the Russian invasion of Crimea may serve as a wake-up call. Germany is the only country in a position to change the prevailing order."

"Esperanto was a very useful language, because wherever you went, you found someone to speak with."

"One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it. Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views."

"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions. ... Following his criticism of repressive Israeli policy on the West Bank, former president Jimmy Carter has suffered the loss of some of the financial backers of his center."

"The Palestine problem does not have a purely military solution. Military superiority is necessary for Israel's national security, but it is not sufficient. The solution has to be political, as President Clinton recognized."

"The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East ... Hamas won the elections in an upset victory. Then came the blunder I am talking about. Israel, with the strong backing of the United States, refused to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government."

"I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel."