🖍️Thomas Carlyle - Collected Quotes

"Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise hand is requisite for carrying it on. Conclusive facts are inseparable from unconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows." (Thomas Carlyle, "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays", 1838)

"A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him." (Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", 1840)

"Inquiries wisely gone into, even on this most complex matter, will yield results worth something, not nothing. But it is a most complex matter; on which, whether for the past or the present. Statistic Inquiry, with its limited means, with its short vision and headlong extensive dogmatism, as yet too often throws not light, but error worse than darkness." (Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", 1840)

"Tables are like cobwebs, like the sieve of Danaides; beautifully reticulated, orderly to look upon, but which will hold no conclusion. Tables are abstractions, and the object a most concrete one, so difficult to read the essence of." (Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", 1840)

"There are innumerable circumstances; and one circumstance left out may be the vital one on which all turned. Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis

of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that ah-eady understands and knows." (Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", 1840)

"There is one fact which Statistic Science has communicated, and a most astonishing one ; the inference from which is pregnant as to this matter." (Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", 1840)

"What constitutes the well-being of a man? Many things; of which the wages he gets, and the bread he buys with them, are but one preliminary item. Grant, however, that the

wages were the whole; that once knowing the wages and the price of bread, we know all; then what are the wages? Statistic Inquiry, in its present unguided condition, cannot

tell. The average rate of day's wages is not correctly ascertained for any portion of this country; not only not for half-centuries, it is not even ascertained anywhere for decades

or years: far from instituting comparisons with the past, the present itself is unknown to us." (Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", 1840)

"A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him." (Thomas Carlyle)

"A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth." (Thomas Carlyle)

"Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows." (Thomas Carlyle)

"In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment." (Thomas Carlyle)

"Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together [...]." (Thomas Carlyle)

"Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness." (Thomas Carlyle)