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
Men
Constant
Vary
Number
Puzzles
Foretell
Becomes
Statistics
Insoluble
Example
Mathematical
Statistician
Numbers
Certainty
Aggregate
Says
Individuals
Puzzle
Individual
Remain
Percentages
Never
Average
Precision

More quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.
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Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.
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There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?” “If I can be of use.” “Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.
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No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Violence is sometimes a duty.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.
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Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil
Arthur Conan Doyle
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Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.
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'It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He [Professor Moriarty] is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.
Arthur Conan Doyle