Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Those who know nothing must believe everything.

A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to "get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted 'on him".

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.

Statistics and numbers are no good unless you have good people to analyse and then interpret their meaning and importance.

[Statistics] The science that can prove everything except the usefulness of statistics.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.

On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.

We spend our time bandying statistics about.

Statistics are like blood sausage: they are delicious until you find out how they're made.

It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it.

The data are what matter in economics, and the more ruthlessness that an economist can summon to make sense of the data, the more useful his findings will be.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.

I bathe in statistics.

Do not take the yardstick of your ignorance to measure what the ancients knew, and call everything which you do not know lies. Do not call things untrue because they are marvelous, but give them a fair consideration.

I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.

He who knows what he is told must know a lot of things that are not so.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

Statistics is, or should be, about scientific investigation and how to do it better, but many statisticians believe it is a branch of mathematics. Now I agree that the physicist, the chemist, the engineer, and the statistician can never know too much mathematics, but their objectives should be better physics, better chemistry, better engineering, and in the case of statistics, better scientific investigation. Whether in any given study this implies more or less mathematics is incidental.

Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.