Quote

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

Arthur Conan Doyle

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Arthur Conan Doyle
Age: 71 †
Born: 1859
Born: May 22
Died: 1930
Died: July 7
Crime Writer
Essayist
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Sir A. Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan
Sir Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Individual
Remain
Percentages
Never
Average
Precision
Men
Constant
Vary
Number
Puzzles
Foretell
Becomes
Statistics
Insoluble
Example
Mathematical
Statistician
Numbers
Certainty
Aggregate
Says
Individuals
Puzzle

More quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I must apologize for calling so late, said he, and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The soul is swayed by the waters.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact. ~ Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today?
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The future was with Fate. The present was our own.
Arthur Conan Doyle