William Petty Quotes

Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either.

We must never let a blizzard of statistics blind us to the real lives and people behind them.

The Government are very keen on amassing statistics; they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.

Europe is a community of half a billion people, more than Russia and the United States combined.

The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived.

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

I have a theory of statistics: if you can double them or halve them and they still work, they are really good statistics.

I think that could be perhaps a little misleading and even our statistics can mislead people at the times though they are not misleading in themselves. It is just that people get mislead

In a climate where people don't understand the numbers, newspapers, campaigners, companies, and politicians can get away with murder

We cannot just look at a country by looking at charts, graphs, and modelling the economy. Behind the numbers there are people.

Knowledge about limitations of your data collection process affects what inferences you can draw from the data.

They're so attached to their patterns that they've forgotten rule number one of human behavior: there are no patterns. People just do things. There's no such things as a coherent and fully integrated human personality, let alone consistent motivation.

I think a lot of creative people have no sense of numbers and economics.

The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection.

Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development?

The earth was given to mankind to support the greatest number of which it is capable, and no tribe or people have a right to withhold from the wants of others more than is necessary for their own support and comfort.

The pollsters who have telephoners are going to consistently get a lower vote for Donald Trump because the media has attacked him so savagely and so dishonestly that a substantial number of people will not say they're for Trump.

I think some people see those three numbers 9/ 11 and they walk away. That might be changing now. People are more willing to step into an artistic exploration of that subject. All you can do is let it go

Of the seven million Americans living abroad, one million are military, and not all of them are Republicans. The other six million are overwhelmingly Democrat because people who live in foreign countries have a much different perspective as to what is happening in our country.

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

No good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong.

Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.

Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it.

What is happening now is that the number of people who are not strong enough or do not feel strong enough to decide to live without the security provided by the community or the state, is going up.

Number one comes freedom first for my people and equality. And this is what I plan to do after I'm through fighting - working with nothing but the people, the little people in the alleys: the downtrodden people, going out and helping them with my image.