50 Quantifying Wisdom from Statistics Quotes

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published September 22, 2023

In our world, where data surrounds us like a digital ocean, statistics quotes are more popular than ever.

Statistics seems like an overwhelming topic for man, but it’s simply the discipline of collecting, organizing, and analyzing data.

It plays an important role in many areas of life and business, including scientific research, business, economics, and the decision-making process.

Types of Statistics

Here are the different types of statistics:

Descriptive Statistics – Summarizing data to provide a snapshot of its variability and tendencies.
Inferential Statistics – Allows us to predict and draw conclusions
Probability Theory – This foundation of statistics helps us while quantifying uncertainty and allows us to understand the likelihood of an event occurring

Applications of Statistics

The following are the key applications of statistics:

Business and Economics – With properly built statistical models, companies can easily shape their future strategies.
Natural Sciences – Statistics also help with analyzing the experimental data in fields like chemistry, biology, and physics.
Social Sciences – Psychologists and sociologists employ statistics when it comes to studying human behavior.
Policy Making
Policy decisions are usually made after statistical analysis. The data involved relates to the social, economic, and demographic areas of society.

If you can’t get enough of data and analytics, check out these statistics quotes.

Top 10 Statistics Quotes

Here are the top statistics quotes helpful in understanding statistics and its importance at a quick glance.

1. “Statistics are there to be broken.” — Casemiro

2. “You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.” — Heinrich Heine

3. “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” — Mark Twain

4. “Voting statistics for younger voters is pathetic.” — Ken Hakuta

5. “Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.” — Jean Baudrillard

6. “At Notre Dame, even my statistics teacher wanted me to win.” — Rudy Ruettiger

7. “Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom’s apple pie.” — Harry Reasoner

8. “It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.” — George Bernard Shaw

9. “Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.” — Bernie Siegel

10. “The statistics for investing in small businesses are such that the vast majority fail.” — Theo Paphitis

Informative Statistics Quotes

These quotes help make statistics easier to understand.

11. “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.” — Henry Clay

12. “Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.” — Morris Kline

13. “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” — Mark Twain

14. “Aggregate statistics can sometimes mask important information.” — Ben Bernanke

15. “You can shape statistics to make them look however you want them to.” — Jamie Carragher

16. “The individual source of the statistics may easily be the weakest link.” — Josiah Stamp

17. “There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.” — Rex Stout

18. “Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.” — Evan Esar

19. “Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.” — Hilaire Belloc

20. “Statistics are just a compilation of people’s stories put on paper, and legislation is our attempt to address those real challenges for people.” — Pramila Jayapal

Statistics Quotes Showing Its Uses

There are wide uses of statistics that help us in daily life and make our work quite easy.

21. “Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.” — Marilyn Vos Savant

22. “I’m doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.” — Lady Gaga

23. “The Government are very keen on amassing statistics – they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams.” — Josiah Stamp

24. “Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics, and a foreign language such as Spanish.” — Nicholas Kristof

25. “Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.” — Zig Ziglar

Additional Quotes Showing the Use of Statistics

Learn more about the many ways data and statistics are used in life and business.

26. “Life is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics; it’s about experience, it’s about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.” — Daniel Libeskind

27. “The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you.” — Rita Mae Brown

28. “You don’t know these people; you don’t know what they intended. You try to compile statistics and correlate them to a result that amounts to nothing more than speculation.” — Marc Racicot

29. “Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it’s an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.” — Christopher McDougall

30. “I was in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So I had some of the most brilliant mathematical statistical minds in the country, who would put together the modern technology, if you like, of understanding the economy and tracking it and trying to influence it.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Statistics Quotes Showing Drawbacks of Statistics

Apart from advantages, statistics also have certain drawbacks that everyone must know.

31. “I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.” — George Canning

32. “I found out that smoking is the leading cause of statistics.” — Matthew Gray Gubler

33. “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” — Ernest Rutherford

34. “Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.” — George Bernard Shaw

35. “Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.” — Vin Scully

36. “People in Midland are real nice folks: I can’t prove that with statistics, but I know West Texas, and it’s just a fact.” — Molly Ivins

37. “There are over 500,000 registered sex offenders across the country, and statistics have shown that the recidivism rate for those criminals is high.” — Jim Sensenbrenner

38. “In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics, you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” — Tom Seaver

39. “I don’t want to play these games of statistics anymore; I have done that. I don’t want to be imprisoned by that or by the morality that is expected of activists.” — Arundhati Roy

40. “Not only is the statistical madness an assault on individuality, it’s also one on temporality too. Statistics – even when accurate – are only an image of the past that can then be Photoshopped before being passed on to the future.” — Will Self

Statistics Quotes On Numbers, Lies, and Perception

Let’s explore more quotes to unleash the intricacies of numbers, deception, and how we perceive data.

41. “In ancient times, they had no statistics, so they had to fall back on lies.” — Stephen Leacock

42. “It’s not always statistics that determine the best player, especially the quarterback.” — Troy Aikman

43. “Statistics do not convey emotion. They shock us for a minute or two, and then we click again.” — Madeleine M. Kunin

44. “Individual statistics, plate time, and everything tends to come, but the most enjoyment I get out of baseball is actually winning.” — Chili Davis

45. “The opposition has moved from blaming the victim to blaming the victim’s advocate’s statistics. Irrespective of what the numbers are, it’s far too many.” — Patricia Ireland

More Quotes About How Statistics Are Used (And Even Manipulated)

Explore additional ways the world applies statistics.

46. “The buffalo isn’t as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States, more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.” — Art Buchwald

47. “Statistics show that many people watch our show from the bedroom, and people you ask into your bedroom have to be more interesting than those you ask into your living room. I kid you not!” — Jack Paar

48. “The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. It has not been accepted because we’ve been in an anthropocentric era.” — Story Musgrave

49. “We were not given any statistics as to how many records were pressed on the blue label. I used to ask Bob Shad how we were going to get paid from record sales, and what I got for an answer was not to worry about the business end of the deal.” — Phil Harris

50. “Throughout the universe of public and private funds, managers are measured quarterly against one index or another, defined by statistics, and corralled into this category or that category so that fund of funds, pensions, and other institutions can make comforting – if not necessarily prudent – asset allocation decisions.” — Michael Burry