Thomas Sowell Statistics Quotes & Sayings

Just as ancient tyrants gave the people bread and circuses, in exchanged for their loyalty, so visions can acquire a tyrannical sway over people's minds by offering them an exalted sense of themselves in exchange for their loyalty to the vision through all the vicissitudes of facts to the contrary. This self-exaltation can take on many forms on many issues.
Whether the particular issue is crime, automobile safety, income statistics, military defense, or overpopulation theories, the one consistency among them is that the conclusions reached exalt those who share the vision over the great unwashed who do not. — Thomas Sowell

Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans. — Thomas Sowell

If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn't have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too. — Pauline Kael

Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster. — Thomas Sowell

They're going to demand your death, Darren. — Darren Shan

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation. — Thomas Sowell

Trust your instincts, Dad always says. If something feels dodgy to you, if someone feels dodgy, you go with dodgy. Don't give the benefit of the doubt because you want to be a nice person, don't wait and see in case you look stupid. Safe comes first. Second could be too late. — Tana French

I kept an interested eye on the transfer window in England, which opened and closed last month, and the lack of frantic activity just goes to show the current financial state of the game right now. — David Ginola

People who care about each other enjoy doing things for one another. They don't consider it servitude. — Ann Landers

Some writers pick a topic and write around that, but I like to include it all. — Sarah Dessen

All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians' warning that correlation is not causation. — Thomas Sowell

I don't look at what people do with their homes in terms of money, but the social and personal value of what they're trying to do and achieve. — Kevin McCloud

When you are in alignment with the desires of your heart, things have a way of working out. — Iyanla Vanzant

All statements are true, if you are free to redefine their terms. — Thomas Sowell

One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten. — Thomas Sowell

They'd never scared him, really. When he was younger, he hadn't known that there was anything different about them. By the time he was old enough to figure out that no one else could see them, he was also old enough to realize that being dead didn't turn people into monsters. It just meant that most of them were lonely. — Jacqueline E. Smith

Moreover, even in the absence of accumulating personal experience, it was difficult to believe that soaring murder statistics reflected simply better record keeping, since it had always been hard to ignore a dead body. — Thomas Sowell

Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right. — Walt Disney Company

I'm very much more choosy now. I do stuff that I really, really, really like. — Michael Caine

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes. — Thomas Jefferson

The fundamental confusion that makes income bracket data and individual income data seem mutually contradictory is the implicit assumption that people in particular income brackets at a given time are an enduring "class" at that level. If that were true, then trends over time in comparisons between income brackets would be the same as trends over time between individuals. Because that is not the case, the two sets of statistics lead not only to different conclusions but even opposite conclusions. — Thomas Sowell

With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with. — Terry Pratchett