Math(ish) quotations

Far from carefully vetted for accuracy.

We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyze them.
William James

A judicious man looks on statistics not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him.
Thomas Carlyle

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.
Leonard Courtney

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.
Sun Tzu

Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
Alan McKay (via the unix program fortune, as I recall)

The final mystery is oneself… Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
Oscar Wilde

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.
Andrew Lang

How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?
Joseph Bertrand

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
Rev. Sydney Smith

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