Statistical Literacy Quotes & Sayings

I'd like to do a bit of comedy. — Stephen Hunter

and here is where unsentimental history and statistical literacy can change our view of modernity, for they show that nostalgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all — Steven Pinker

The non-scientist in the street probably has a clearer notion of physics, chemistry and biology than of statistics, regarding statisticians as numerical philatelists, mere collector of numbers. — Stephen Senn

And so a miserable but possible scenario is that countries in the bottom billion oscillate between the traps and limbo, perhaps switching in the process from one trap to another..
Let me be clear: we cannot rescue them. The societies of the bottom billion can only be rescued from within. In every society of the bottom billion there are people working for change, but usually they are defeated by the powerful internal forces stacked against them. We should be helping the heroes. So far, our efforts have been paltry: through inertia, ignorance, and incompetence, we have stood by and watched them lose.
Let me be clear: we cannot rescue them. These societies of the bottom billion can only be rescued from within. — Paul Collier

Freedom of Will" - that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order - who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful "underwills" or under-souls - indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls - to his feelings of delight as commander. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Unlike some of the Arabs of antiquity who learned to make a living as farmers or merchants, the mark of manhood for the Arab nomads who followed Muhammad was the possession of arms, obsession with honor, and claim to pastures, camels, and women. Robbery and murder outside the protective confines of one's clan were simply the means to an end." 125 It was upon the ethos of the ruthless raid that Muhammad founded Islam. — Larry Kelley

Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication ... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done. — Peter Drucker

So-Youn has good qualities in both jump and power, triple combination is her biggest strength and she also has great artistic value in her skating. — Kim Yuna

God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude. — Charles Caleb Colton

I've spent a lot of years living with normal people. If I take a private jet to go to a meeting in Milan, well, that's my business; I can do it. But I don't live for it. — Brunello Cucinelli

slipping between the smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of big drops on large leaves, and something else - what was it? - a faint stirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig and then such silence that it seemed some one was listening. Round the corner of Crescent Bay, between the piled-up masses of broken rock, a flock of sheep came pattering. They were huddled together, a small, tossing, woolly mass, and their thin, stick-like legs trotted along quickly as if the cold and the quiet — Katherine Mansfield

Parents show you life is a paved road. Friends show you the road isn't there yet, it's waiting for you to carve it out. Parents show you life is a handbook, with rules set in place. Friends show you how to break the rules you're handed. — Katie Kacvinsky

Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere? — Salman Rushdie