This is one of the earliest known uses of the term "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" which is often attributed to Mark Twain, who in his Autobiography (1924) in a passage probably written in Florence in 1904, attributes it to Benjamin Disraeli, perhaps because he thought him "The Wise Statesman" Courtney referred to. An even earlier incident has recently been located, in which Mrs Andrew Crosse (Cornelia Augusta Hewitt Crosse) states in "Old Memories Interviewed" (1892):
To My Fellow-Disciples at Saratoga Springs (1895)
Context: What a jolly awakening there will be some few years hence, when the inevitable argument of experience will show us a nation contradicting itself through the voices of its chosen representatives! The stupidest politician will sit up, rubbing his eyes. After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, "Lies — damned lies — and statistics," still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of. So we may be led to the serious consideration of change by the evolution of materials of conviction which those who run may read, though some who read may wish to run away from them.
“You will find an allusion to some mysterious cause for a phenomenon in Stocks. It is surmised that the deferred debt is to be taken up at the next session, and some anticipated provision made for it. This may either be an invention of those who wish to sell, or it may be a reality imparted in confidence to the purchasers or smelt out by their sagacity. I have had a hint that something is intended and has dropt from 1 which has led to this speculation. I am unwilling to credit the fact, untill I have further evidence, which I am in a train of getting if it exists. It is said that packet boats & expresses are again sent from this place to the Southern States, to buy up the paper of all sorts which has risen in the market here. These & other abuses make it a problem whether the system of the old paper under a bad Government, or of the new under a good one, be chargeable with the greater substantial injustice. The true difference seems to be that by the former the few were the victims to the many; by the latter the many to the few. It seems agreed on all hands now that the bank is a certain & gratuitous augmentation of the capitals subscribed, in a proportion of not less than 40 or 50 [per cent] and if the deferred debt should be immediately provided for in favor of the purchasers of it in the deferred shape, & since the unanimous vote that no change [should] be made in the funding system, my imagination will not attempt to set bounds to the daring depravity of the times. The stock-jobbers will become the pretorian band of the Government, at once its tool & its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, & overawing it by clamours & combinations. Nothing new from abroad. I shall not be in [Philadelphia] till the close of the Week.”
Letter to Thomas Jefferson (8 August 1791)
1790s
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James Madison 145
4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817) 1751–1836Related quotes
2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)
Mysterious Answers To Mysterious Questions http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_questions/ (August 2007); Yudkowsky credits the map/territory analogy to physicist/statistician Edwin Thompson Jaynes.
Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), p. 47
On John Garang's death in a helicopter crash, as quoted in Times Online https://web.archive.org/web/20050805121254/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1722777,00.html (5 August 2005), United Kingdom
2000s
Source: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), p. 322
Context: In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea as they hit upon themselves or hear set forth by others, no matter how simple and stupid these may be, gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage — if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries.
quote of c. 1927
Quote in 'Autour de Ballet Méchanique', as quoted in Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota; published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, pp. 21-22
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's
Source: The Self and Its Brain (1977), p. 467
"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s