“A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.”

—  Zhuangzi

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Zhuangzi 38
classic Chinese philosopher -369–-286 BC

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“You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

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Context: The totality of all alephs cannot be conceived as a determinate, well-defined, and also a finished set. This is the punctum saliens, and I venture to say that this completely certain theorem, provable rigorously from the definition of the totality of all alephs, is the most important and noblest theorem of set theory. One must only understand the expression "finished" correctly. I say of a set that it can be thought of as finished (and call such a set, if it contains infinitely many elements, "transfinite" or "suprafinite") if it is possible without contradiction (as can be done with finite sets) to think of all its elements as existing together, and to think of the set itself as a compounded thing for itself; or (in other words) if it is possible to imagine the set as actually existing with the totality of its elements.

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“In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the pricesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.”

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“Society presses upon us all the time. The progress of the last half century is the progress of the frog out of his well.”

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"Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians" at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html

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““How does one conquer fear, Don B.?”
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Don B. gave me a pitying look.
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“Boys throw stones at frogs in fun, but the frogs do not die in fun, but in earnest.”

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