The record of a month’s roulette playing at Monte Carlo can afford us material for discussing the foundations of knowledge.
Statistics is the grammar of science.
That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.
All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.
The classification of facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiassed by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind.
I look upon statistics as the handmaid of medicine, but on that very account I hold that it befits medicine to treat her handmaid with proper respect, and not to prostitute her services for controversial or personal purposes.
Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
There is no shortcut to truth, no way to gain knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of the scientific method.
The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe.
The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.
It is the old experience that a rude instrument in the hand of a master craftsman will achieve more than the finest tool wielded by the uninspired journeyman.