"The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data."

John Tukey Mathematics See all quotes by John Tukey →

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“The tool that is so dull that you cannot cut yourself on it is not likely to be sharp enough to be either useful or helpful.”

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”

Resonant Thoughts

"His pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him.…"

— Paul Klee

Art1879–1940

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"Montesquieu in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"

— Montesquieu

Philosophy1689–1755

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"I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bo…"

— Wendell Berry

Literature1934

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"Starting with the Minnesota twin study thirty-five years ago, and now with a mountain of data from twin, sibling, and adoption studies, we know that pretty much anything you can quantify about human p…"

— John Derbyshire

Politics1945–1938

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