On Statistics: Statistics and Knowledge

"Statistics are no substitute for judgment." (Henry Clay, 1850)

"Statistics are no substitute for common sense." (Richard N Bialac)

"[…] statistical techniques are tools of thought, and not substitutes for thought." (Abraham Kaplan, "The Conduct of Inquiry", 1964)

"The manipulation of statistical formulas is no substitute for knowing what one is doing." (Hubert M Blalock Jr., "Social Statistics" 2nd Ed., 1972)

"We must be both rational and intellectual, both analytic and imaginative, utilizing both statistics and insight." (Lloyd Reynolds)

"A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him." (Thomas Carlyle)

"The application of efficient statistical procedure has power, but the application of common sense has more." (Jasper Wall)

"Statistics is the refuge of the uninformed." (Audrey Haber & Richard P Runyon, "General Statistics", 1973)

"The fundamental gospel of statistics is to push back the domain of ignorance, prejudice, rule-of-thumb, arbitrary or premature decisions, tradition, and dogmatism and to increase the domain in which decisions are made and principles are formulated on the basis of analyzed quantitative facts." (Robert W Burgess, "The Whole Duty of the Statistical Forecaster", Journal of the American Statistical Association , Vol. 32, No. 200, 1937)