John Tukey Quotes

It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.

Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

At the end of the day, the numbers that we're hearing are not going to be totally correct or not correct at all.

Early numbers are always wrong.

I can say that it's 10 miles from my home to Trinity, when in fact that's not quite right, it's off by about 10%, but nobody would say that I'm telling a lie or making a mistake when I rounded off because that's the way we speak and rounded off terms regularly.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.

Round numbers are always false.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

My predictions are notably inaccurate.

A lot of things can't be modeled very well.

Precision is not one of the qualities that comes out in my work.

It's hard to pin down precise dates on these things.

In the intelligence business you are almost never completely wrong or completely right.

Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.

An inch in a miss is as good as an ell.

Pursuit of the approximate can conclude. Not so pursuit of the absolute.

You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

It is not often that we use language correctly; usually we use it incorrectly, though we understand each others meaning.

The development of a kind heart, or feeling of closeness for all human beings, does not involve any of the kind of religiosity we normally associate with it...It is for everyone, irrespective of race, religion or any political affiliation.

There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right - except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

In the margin for error lies all our room for maneuver.

I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.