Sunday, 5 September 2010

... and Statistics

I'm sitting here in a more than normally thoughtful mood, after this morning's worship. And in an attempt at finding something to distract me, I came across a Telegraph discussion on the so-called "man-made" global warming, a commentator quotes Winston Churchill as saying there are "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics". I suppose that Sir Winston may have said some such thing, at some point, but if he did he would have been quoting somebody else. Since Mark Twain popularised it, but he attributed it, probably wrongly, to Benjamin Disraeli. But whoever invented it, unless it was Sir Winston as a very young man, who then passed it on to Mark Twain and claimed it was Disraeli, it probably was not Churchill.

It just goes to show, as Charles Spurgeon once said, there's one born every minute. Or was that John Bunyan?

1 comment :

  1. I believe you are correct that it was indeed Charles Spurgeon who said "there's a John Bunyan born every minute". I edit Spurgeons' wikipedia page to say that if it helps.

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