Quote

In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.

Stephen Leacock

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stephen Leacock
Age: 74 †
Born: 1869
Born: December 30
Died: 1944
Died: March 28
Economist
Humorist
Political Scientist
Writer
Hants
Stephen Butler Leacock
Computer
Lies
Economy
Lying
Times
Fall
Back
Statistics
Ancient

More quotes by Stephen Leacock

Image
All our yesterdays, it is true, have only lighted fools the way to dusty death. But we need at least the dates of the yesterdays and the list of the fools.
Stephen Leacock
Image
In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same.
Stephen Leacock
Image
If every day in the life of a school could be the last day but one, there would be little fault to find with it.
Stephen Leacock
Image
There is an old motto that runs, If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. This is nonsense. It ought to read, If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Too much has been said of the heroes of history-the strong men, the troublesome men too little of the amiable, the kindly, the tolerant.
Stephen Leacock
Image
The road comes to an end just when it ought to be getting somewhere. The passengers alight, shaken and weary, to begin, all over again, something else.
Stephen Leacock
Image
When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it.
Stephen Leacock
Image
You can never have international peace as long as you have national poverty.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Chess is one long regret.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.
Stephen Leacock
Image
In Canada we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages ... so we just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons, and American for conversation.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Indeed I have always found that the only thing in regard to Toronto which faraway people know for certain is that McGill University is in it.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
Stephen Leacock
Image
Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it.
Stephen Leacock
Image
The classical scholars have kept alive the tradition of the superiority of the ancient languages -- a kaleidoscopic mass of suffixes and prefixes, supposed to represent an infinite shading of meaning. It is a character they share with the Ojibway and the Zulu.
Stephen Leacock
Image
My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them.
Stephen Leacock
Image
A lone maple leaf resting on sand Have you ever been out for a late autumn walk in the closing part of the afternoon, and suddenly looked up to realize that the leaves have practically all gone? And the sun has set and the day gone before you knew it, and with that a cold wind blows across the landscape? That's retirement.
Stephen Leacock