Who was it that said?

Question

Lies , d**n lies , and statistics . ?

Answer 1

"When a Russian citizen was interviewed, following the death of Chernenko, he bagan by saying, 'As one of your writers said, "There are three kinds of lie: a small lie, a big lie and politics.' "

---_Time_, March 25, 1985, p. 21.

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends...That if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."

--Adlai E Stevenson, campaign remark, Fresno, CA, September 10, 1952, in J. B. Martin, _Adlai Stevenson of Illinois_, pp. 673-74, 1976.

Answer 2

In "Wikipedia," the quote, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is part of a phrase attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and popularized in the United States by Mark Twain:   "There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics." The semi-ironic statement refers to the persuasive power of numbers, and succinctly describes how even accurate statistics can be used to bolster inaccurate arguments."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damne...

It appears that the paragraph above from "Wikipedia" is intended to identify the two individuals most often credited with the phrase.

Considerable attention has been paid to identifying the person to whom attribution is owed.  The earliest "credit" is given to Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1891).  In 1892, Mrs. Andrew Crosse refers to the phrase.  Also in 1892, a phrase very similar to the one in question is attributed to Sir Robert Giffen, although he is said to have referred to it as "old."  Similarly, in 1892, the phrase was used by Arthur James Balfour, but he, too, referred to it as "old."  In 1893, the phrase appears in the "Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Convention of the Traveling Engineers Association," as having been said earlier by a W.E. Symons.  In 1894, the phrase is credited to Walter Bagehot.

It is not until 1895 that attribution is given to Benjamin Disraeli.  And apparently the only connection Mark Twain has with the quotation is found in the following passage in Mark Twain's Autobiography (edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, New York and London: Harper Brothers 1924, Vol. I, p. 246):  

"I was deducing from the above that I have been slowing down steadily in these thirty-six years, but I perceive that my statistics have a defect: 3,000 words in the spring of 1868, when I was working seven or eight or nine hours at a sitting, has little or no advantage over the sitting of to-day, covering half the time and producing half the output. Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics'."

For a full discussion of these varying sources, please see: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histst...

Answer 3

Albert Einstein didn't say that, but he also observed that "Statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital".

Answer 4

YOU JUST DID.