“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

— John Maynard Keynes

Not attributed to Keynes until after his death. The original quote comes from Carveth Read and is:
It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.
Logic, deductive and inductive (1898), p. 351 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18440/18440-h/18440-h.htm#Page_351
Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong." by John Maynard Keynes?

John Maynard Keynes 122

British economist 1883–1946

Herman E. Daly (1938) American economist

Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley, in Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. (2003), page 234. quoted in Beyond GDP Measuring progress, true wealth, and the well-being of nations http://ec.europa.eu/environment/beyond_gdp/key_quotes_en.html, European Commission:Environment

“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.”

John Tukey (1915–2000) American mathematician

The future of data analysis. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33 (1), (1962), page 13.
Variant: "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." "as the renowned statistician John Tukey once reportedly said," according to Super Freakonomics page 224.

“Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“The right kind of leisure is better than the wrong kind of work.”

Baltasar Gracián book The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Más vale el buen ocio que el negocio.
Maxim 247
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

“Accidents are not accidents but precise arrivals at the wrong right time.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Being Late http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21366/Being_Late
From the poems written in English

“In these matters, as often in our culture, it is far, far better to be wrong in a respectable way than to be right for the wrong reasons.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter V, The Twilight of Illusion, Section VII, p. 85

“It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

“Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo051109/debtext/51109-03.htm#51109-03_spmin10, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 439, col. 302.
9 November 2005, responding to Charles Kennedy in the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions. Blair was referring to the likely defeat in Parliament of additional powers to detain terror suspects without charge, which happened later that day.
2000s

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Source: Crime and Punishment (Zločin a trest)

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Maynard Keynes 122

Related quotes

Related topics