"It has long been recognized by public men of all kinds […] that statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics." (Hilaire Belloc, "The Silence of the Sea", 1940)
"The fundamental difference between engineering with and without statistics boils down to the difference between the use of a scientific method based upon the concept of laws of nature that do not allow for chance or uncertainty and a scientific method based upon the concepts of laws of probability as an attribute of nature." (Walter A Shewhart, 1940)
"Statistics: Data of a numerical kind looking for an argument." (Evan Esar,"Esar's Comic Dictionary", 1943)
"Statistics: Fiction in its most uninteresting form." (Evan Esar,"Esar's Comic Dictionary", 1943)
"Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions." (Evan Esar,"Esar's Comic Dictionary", 1943)
"Statistics: The science that can prove everything except the usefulness of statistics." (Evan Esar,"Esar's Comic Dictionary", 1943)
"[Statistics] is both a science and an art. It is a science in that its methods are basically systematic and have general application; and an art in that their successful application depends to a considerable degree on the skill and special experience of the statistician, and on his knowledge of the field of application, e.g. economics." (Leonard H C Tippett, "Statistics", 1943)
"[…] statistical literacy. That is, the ability to read diagrams and maps; a"consumer" understanding of common statistical terms, as average, per cent, dispersion, correlation, and index number." (Douglas Scates,"Statistics: The Mathematics for Social Problems", 1943)
"Statistics is the branch of scientific method which deals with the data obtained by counting or measuring the properties of populations of natural phenomena. In this definition 'natural phenomena' includes all the happenings of the external world, whether human or not " (Sir Maurice G Kendall, “Advanced Theory of Statistics”, Vol. 1, 1943)
"And nobody can get far without at least an acquaintance with the mathematics of probability, not to the extent of making its calculations and filling examination papers with typical equations, but enough to know when they can be trusted, and when they are cooked. For when their imaginary numbers correspond to exact quantities of hard coins unalterably stamped with heads and tails, they are safe within certain limits; for here we have solid certainty [...] but when the calculation is one of no constant and several very capricious variables, guesswork, personal bias, and pecuniary interests, come in so strong that those who began by ignorantly imagining that statistics cannot lie end by imagining, equally ignorantly, that they never do anything else." (George B Shaw, "The Vice of Gambling and the Virtue of Insurance", 1944)
"How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium" (death)? [...] the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness […] really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment." (Erwin Schrödinger, "What Is Life?", 1944)
"[Disorganized complexity] is a problem in which the number of variables is very large, and one in which each of the many variables has a behavior which is individually erratic, or perhaps totally unknown. However, in spite of this helter-skelter, or unknown, behavior of all the individual variables, the system as a whole possesses certain orderly and analyzable average properties. [...] [Organized complexity is] not problems of disorganized complexity, to which statistical methods hold the key. They are all problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole. They are all, in the language here proposed, problems of organized complexity." (Warren Weaver, "Science and Complexity", American Scientist Vol. 36, 1948)
"To some people, statistics is ‘quartered pies, cute little battleships and tapering rows of sturdy soldiers in diversified uniforms’. To others, it is columns and columns of numerical facts. Many regard it as a branch of economics. The beginning student of the subject considers it to be largely mathematics." (The Editors, "Statistics, The Physical Sciences and Engineering", The American Statistician, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1948)
"The characteristic which distinguishes the present-day professional statistician, is his interest and skill in the measurement of the fallibility of conclusions." (George W Snedecor, "On a Unique Feature of Statistics", [address] 1948)
"There is only one kind of whiskey, but two broad classes of data, good and bad." (William E Deming, "On the Classification of Statistics", The American Statistician Vol. 2 (2), 1948)
"To some people, statistics is ‘quartered pies, cute little battleships and tapering rows of sturdy soldiers in diversified uniforms’. To others, it is columns and columns of numerical facts. Many regard it as a branch of economics. The beginning student of the subject considers it to be largely mathematics." (The Editors, "Statistics, The Physical Sciences and Engineering", The American Statistician, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1948)
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