If Japan Can...Why Can't We? (1980)
“I didn't care about the statistics in anything else. I didn't, and don't pay any attention to the statistics of the stock market, the weather, the crime rate, the gross national product, the circulation of magazines, the ebb and flow of literacy among football fans and how many people are going to starve to death before the year 2050 if I don't start adopting them for $3.69 a month; just baseball. Now why is that? It is because baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the powers of language.”
1985 Baseball Abstract
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Bill James 3
American baseball writer and statistician 1949Related quotes
"Paths to Success: A Forum on African American Men" panel discussion (July 18, 2006), quoted in [Fulbright, Leslie, http://www.nospank.net/n-q19r.htm, Cosby, Others Say Black Men Still in Crisis, San Francisco Chronicle, (July 19, 2006)]
When Churchill was in opposition after 1945, he led the Conservative Party in a debate about the Health Service. As he listened to Aneurin Bevan’s opening speech, he called for some statistics about infant mortality … [which were] supplied, copiously and accurately, by Iain Macleod, then working in the back rooms of the Conservative Research Department. But, in his speech, Churchill made only one bold and sweeping use … [of Macleod’s detailed research]. Encountering MacLeod afterward, Churchill made the above statement. As cited in The Life of Politics (1968), Henry Fairlie, Methuen, pp. 203-204.
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Context: I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is that, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 8
[The Case against Education, 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=Mws8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15]
The Case against Education (2018)
“I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.”
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards, p. 587.
“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic.”
Being from Manson's Fight Song of Holy Wood, this is actually a quote from German writer Erich Maria Remarque, also often misattributed to Josef Stalin.
Misattributed
Quoted in http://books.google.com/books?id=ck6bXqt5shkC&q="I+could+prove+God+statistically"&pg=PA298#v=onepage Readers Digest (October 1943)
“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”
Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)