Qualitative Assessment Quotes

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts

The value is in the worth, not in the number.

Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?

It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth

I don't believe in statistics. There are too many factors that can't be measured. You can't measure a ballplayer's heart.

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

Theatre critics have no special access to the truth. And there should be no objective truth to art.

Sometimes fans, sometimes even players, they don't know the game sometimes, and they look at numbers, or they use smoke-and-mirrors as far as who's a top 15 player, who's a top 20 player.

The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning.

I'm not a numbers type of guy who says I need this many yards, this many touchdowns.

Buffett found it 'extraordinary' that academics studied such things. They studied what was measurable, rather than what was meaningful. 'As a friend [Charlie Munger] said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Hire people more for their judgment than for their talents.

You banter, and you talk, and you get a sense of the speed of thinking and flexibility... It's not terribly scientific, but I interview a dozen or two dozen people a week, and I get a certain vibe reasonably fast.

Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.

Our reliance on the validity of a scientific conclusion depends ultimately on a judgment of coherence; and as there can exist no strict criterion for coherence, our judgment of it must always remain a qualitative, nonformal, tacit, personal judgment.

If quantitatively the American achievement is impressive, qualitatively it is somewhat less satisfying.

On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?

The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

I don't even look at resumes anymore. I think they're misguided. I talk to them, ask them where they've been, "What's your favorite experience in a restaurant?" Where do they like to eat? Blah blah blah. All that stuff, but I can only really describe my journey with another person if I can connect with them and their passion. Otherwise, I don't care where they've worked. It doesn't matter to me. Really I have to feel it, and then I can teach them anything.

A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.