Francis Galton: General

Francis Galton was British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics. Explore interesting quotes on general.

Francis Galton: 28 quotes2 likes

“There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.”

Francis Galton Hereditary Genius

Hereditary Genius (1869), p. 414
Hereditary Genius (1869)

“General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification. But it is the triumph of scientific men to rise superior to such superstitions, to desire tests by which the value of beliefs may be ascertained, and to feel sufficiently masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found untrue.”

Cited in Modgil, Sohan, and Celia Modgil, eds. Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy. Vol. 4. Routledge, 1987.
Other works

“After much consideration and many inquiries, I determined, in 1885, on experimenting with sweet peas, which were suggested to me both by Sir Joseph Hooker and by Mr. Darwin. …The result clearly proved Regression; the mean Filial deviation was only one-third that of the parental one, and the experiments all concurred. The formula that expresses the descent from one generation of a people to the next, showed that the generations would be identical if this kind of Regression was allowed for.”

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

“The following question had been much in my mind. How is it possible for a population to remain alike in its features, as a whole, during many successive generations, if the average produce of each couple resemble their parents? Their children are not alike but vary…”

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)