The quotation "Lies-damned lies-and then there is statistics" is often
attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British Prime Minister. The
source for this view is the autobiography of Mark Twain, where he makes that
attribution. Nevertheless, no version of this quotation has been found in any
of Disraeli's published works or letters. An early reference to the expression,
which may explain Twain's assertion is found in a speech made by Leonard H.
Courtney, (1832-1918), later Lord Courtney, in New York in 1895:
'After all, facts are facts, and
although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise
Statesman, "Lies - damn lies - and statistics," still there are some
easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out
of.’
There's no indication that by
'Wise Statesman' Courtney was referring to any specific person, although it may
be that Twain thought that he meant Disraeli.
The earliest citation of the
current usage of the phrase, that is, "there are three kinds of
falsehoods, lies, damned lies and statistics" is from Arthur James
Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, as quoted in the Manchester Guardian, 29th
June 1892:
“Professor [Joseph] Munro
reminded him of an old saying which he rather reluctantly proposed, in that
company, to repeat. It was to the effect that there were three gradations of
inveracity - there were lies, there were damned lies, and there were
statistics."
It is quite possible that
earlier examples may be found in print. There are certainly numerous earlier
examples that approximate to the phrase - "a fib, a lie and
statistics" (1891), "simple liars, damned liars and experts"
(1885) etc. There are several other examples from the 1880s and 1890s of different
wordings of what is the same thought, that is, the distrust of misleadingly
interpreted statistical data.
In 1885, Leonard Huxley,
published The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, a memoir of his
distinguished zoologist father. Included in this is T. H. Huxley's account of a
meeting of the X Club, which was a gathering of eminent thinkers who aimed to
advance the cause of science, especially Darwinism:
"Talked politics, scandal,
and the three classes of witnesses - liars, damned liars, and experts.”
The same idea was also current
in the USA around the same date. The New Albany Daily Ledger printed
this opinion in July1887:
The total value of the entire
agricultural crop for 1886 is given at $219,531... There is nothing that lies
like statistics.
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