Quote

Computers, like automobiles and airplanes, do only what people tell them to do.

Bill James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bill James
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: October 5
Statistician
Writer
Holton
Kansas
George William James
Tell
Like
People
Automobiles
Airplanes
Automobile
Computers
Airplane
Computer

More quotes by Bill James

Image
Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses. Anyone can become a drug addict if you let yourself do it and, once you become a drug addict, you'll do whatever you have to to get the drugs. Absolutely, anybody can do it.
Bill James
Image
In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.
Bill James
Image
It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.
Bill James
Image
Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws.
Bill James
Image
I try to take large, general questions that are difficult to resolve and break them down into small, very specific questions that have clear answers.
Bill James
Image
A chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera's picture on the other.
Bill James
Image
Visualizing the movement finally got me over the top after months of practice.
Bill James
Image
(Mantle) was clearly a greater player in his peak years.
Bill James
Image
Crime cases tend to be fascinating until you figure out what happened.
Bill James
Image
Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.
Bill James
Image
Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment. It's an interesting phenomena and I tried to put it in perspective and tried to think through a few of the real questions that this sometimes unseemly business raises.
Bill James
Image
There comes a moment during a job interview when you're still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes.
Bill James
Image
The human race has been in a long struggle to eliminate murder. And we will succeed.
Bill James
Image
How easy it is for a fantasy to grab hold of your foot like a rope, and dangle your life upside down while brigands go through your pockets. Deal with the life you've got. Solve the problems you have, rather than fantasizing about a life without them.
Bill James
Image
You're just too poor to get rich.
Bill James
Image
Even if Mays is given every conceivable break on every unknown - defense, base running, clutch hitting - his performance still would not match Mantle's.
Bill James
Image
It's extremely damaging to a fair trial to have people reaching judgment about the case in the newspapers and on the radio before the facts are heard in a case.
Bill James
Image
When I was a small kid, I grew up in the newspapers.
Bill James
Image
I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.
Bill James
Image
Letting him manage in the major leagues is like sending Bo Derek through cellblock A without a bodyguard.
Bill James