"The drawing shows me at a glance what would be spread over ten pages in a book." (Ivan Turgenev, 1862) [2]
"Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lighting-flash, the importance of a subject which ten thousand labored words with the same purpose in view, had left at last but dim and uncertain." (Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi", 1883)
"One good picture is worth many pages of written description." (William Sproston Caine, 1891) [2]
"One look is worth a thousand words" (Kathleen Caffyn, 1903)
"Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words." (Arthur Brisbane, The Post-Standard, 1911)
"One Look Is Worth A Thousand Words" ([advertisement] 1913)
"A picture is worth ten thousand words. If you can’t see the truth in these pictures you are among the vast majority that must learn only by experience." (Arthur Brisbane, 1915)
"One picture is worth ten thousand words." (Frederick R Barnard, Printer’s Ink, 1921)
"One Picture Worth Ten Thousand Words" ([Chinese proverb] 1927)
"In many instances, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. To make this true in more diverse circumstances, much more creative effort is needed to pictorialize the output from data analysis. Naive pictures are often extremely helpful, but more sophisticated pictures can be both simple and even more informative." (John W Tukey & Martin B Wilk, "Data Analysis and Statistics: An Expository Overview", 1966)
"One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word." (Edward Abbey, "Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside", 1984)
"A picture may be worth a thousand words, a formula is worth a thousand pictures." (Edsger Dijkstra, [conference at ETH Zurich] 1994)
"A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words." (John Dunning, "The Bookman's Wake", 1995)
"A picture tells a thousand words. But you get a thousand pictures from someone's voice." (Paul Fleischman, "Seek", 2001)
"If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures." (Daniel H Pink, "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future", 2005)
"A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not all pictures are readable, interpretable, meaningful, or relevant." (Kristen Sosulski, "Data Visualization Made Simple: Insights into Becoming Visual", 2018)
"A good metaphor is worth a thousand pictures." (Anon)
"As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture." (John McCarthy [source])
References:
[1] Wikipedia (2024) A picture is worth a thousand words [link]
[2] Quote Investigator (2022) A Picture Is Worth Ten Thousand Words [link]
[3] SQL-Troubles (2024) Charts vs. Thousand Words [link]
