The Meaning of Life

These hold some meaning for me, remind me of someone I love, or they're just purely enjoyable. If you can't laugh about it...

Revised Apr. 2021

Anesthesia

Checking conductive footwear

Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lay down.
In my country, we beat the horse that runs the fastest. Tibor
We're not playing Mario Kart up there.
First aviate, then navigate, then communicate
In a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse. (Rules of The House of God by Samuel Shem)
Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers. -Victor Hugo
All things are always on the move simultaneously. One has to do the best one can, but he is an unwise man who thinks there is any certain way of winning this war. The only plan is to persevere. -Winston Churchill
You were in a hurry [and made a mistake]? Son, those boys in the oak-paneled offices downtown don't know the meaning of the word, "hurry". Jim Bloomfield CRNA
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Never confuse activity with accomplishment.
From Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
- What emergency treatment is best administered by ear? Words of comfort
- ...for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient. FW Peabody 1925
- Just as English Missionaries discovered when they came to India, there was no better way to carry Christ's love than through stupes and poultices, liniments and dressings, cleansing and comfort. What better ministry than the ministry of healing?
- It is often the second mistake, coming in haste to correct the first mistake, that does the patient in.
- Sound Nursing Sense is more important than knowledge, though knowledge only enhances it. Sound nursing sense is a quality that cannot be defined, yet it is invaluable when present and noticeable when absent. To paraphrase Osler, a nurse with book knowledge but without sound nursing sense is like a sailor at sea in a seaworthy vessel but without map, sextant, or compass. (Of course, the nurse without book knowledge has not gone to sea at all!)
Pulling an LMA deep is like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane (Greg)
You will get into trouble, when you talk yourself out of doing what you know you should do.
Nobody ever died from being extubated too late.
LMA stands for Let Me Aspirate.
The more you churn, the more you earn.
Always Atropine before Anectine.
It is important to learn from your mistakes. It's even better to learn from others' mistakes. --Andrew Teich
Our patients are HONDAs (HTN, Obese, Non-compliant, Diabetic, Atherosclerotic)
Experience is a great thing to have, but you have to suffer a little to get it. Lloyd Carr
You do best what you do most often.
It's hard to kill a spontaneously breathing patient.
The chief value in adequate physical equipment is not that it makes eternal vigilance unnecessary, but that it makes eternal vigilance effective. [from 1941].
What's the definition of a good anesthetic? When the patient is more asleep than you are.
If these monitors are so dependable, what do they need you for?
Never let them die with just you there.
Anesthesia is the half-awake, watching the half-asleep being half-murdered by the half-witted.
Another name for open & close laparotomy? Peek and shriek.
Epidurals? You go from chewin' your nails to doin' your nails.
Don't go towards the light.
Yeah, well, just don't make it look like murder.

...and Anesthesia Education

If you want me around when the plane crashes, make sure I'm around when the plane takes off.
Character is both formed and revealed when we are tested, when we are forced to make decisions under pressure. That test can either make us stronger or it can highlight our weaknesses and crack us into pieces. -Bryan Cranston
One of our professors described a lecture as "a mystical process by which the notes on the pad of the lecturer pass on to the pad of the student, without passing through the mind of either." -John Cleese
Lack of boundaries invites a lack of respect. -Gerard Hogan
People do what you inspect, not what you expect.
Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience-a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask. -Robert A. Caro
In college you want good grades, a great social life, and sleep. You can have only two out of three.
It doesn't matter how heavy the last straw is.
Look at the patient.
Some people have eight years experience. Others have one year of experience repeated eight times.
There is no learning in the second kick of a mule. John Pina Craven
"The schools remain the repository of hopes, the guarantee of security for our profession" --Agatha Hodgins.
Only the laundryman knew the true extent of their fear. John Pina Craven
When I went to graduate school for nurse anesthesia, we were told, Don't get married. Don't get divorced. Keep the distractions to a minimum. Devote yourself to it. Devote? I wasn't planning on joining a monastery or nunnery. The church-like mental image I had of Devotion did not seem to match the educational journey I was beginning! After a time, I realized that you can get through it either by casting yourself into it whole-heartedly (devoting yourself to it), or could do just enough to get by, or could even be dragged through kicking and screaming. You got through in each case; but devoting yourself to it was a lot more pleasant. Win, lose, or draw, I slept better at night- knowing there was nothing more I could have done to keep my patients safe.... It can be the worst two years of your life; or you can make it the best two years.
“Critical thinking requires assembling data to back up one’s opinion. Otherwise students may falsely conclude that all opinions are somehow equal.” Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
Calmly, with a look of complete confidence, he said, “Just take it one evolution at a time.” ... These words would stick with me for the rest of my career. They summed up a philosophy for dealing with difficult times. Most BUD/ S trainees dropped out because their event horizon was too far in the distance. They struggled not with the problem of the moment, but with what they perceived would be an endless series of problems, which they believed they couldn’t overcome. When you tackled just one problem, one event, or, in the vernacular of BUD/ S training, one evolution at a time, then the difficult became manageable. Like many things in life, success in BUD/ S didn’t always go to the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest. It went to the man who faltered, who failed, who stumbled, but who persevered, who got up and kept moving. Always moving forward, one evolution at a time. “Never quit. Never quit. Never quit!” Sea Stories by William McCraven
If you're going through hell, keep going. Winston Churchill
[Mike] Barwis is a firm believer in pushing the body beyond what the mind thinks it can do. "When we look at what we're trying to achieve, it's not about needing something or wanting something -- you have to work to get it; that's the bottom line," he said. "If you want something, you have to pay the price to be there. We never try to weed anybody out, but some people don't want to pay the price... Working as hard as you can possibly work to achieve a goal is not for every person and that's OK if that's the decision they make. I can't control that. You're going to see kids fall out of there because they don't want to pay that price. The kids that do will be successful. Bo (Schembechler) coined a phrase, 'Those who stay will be champions'." Angelique S. Chengelis / The Detroit News May 5, 2008
Work beats talent unless talent works.
Everyone can be prepared at a doctoral level. But if they cannot maintain an airway, they will be out of a job by noon on Monday. Sandy Ouellette
Clinical expertise is formed by good judgments. Good judgments come from bad experiences.
Novices see only what is there; experts see what is not there.
Just lower the bar enough, they will trip on it and fall forward.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
When you're in a hole, it's time to stop digging.
When I was young, Dad told me about a man who used to bang his head against a wall, because it was so nice when he stopped. -John Cleese
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
You'll always have trouble with a two-headed dog.
People judge you not by your abilities, but by your choices.
Some bridges are pre-burned.
What makes you think you can't do anything that any human has ever accomplished? Einstein had about 1500 gm of brain tissue, just like you...
THINK!
You hate to come, you hate to stay, you hate to leave.
His greatest strength is his greatest weakness.
Talk low, talk slow, don't say too much.
The essential elements of an anesthesia education are: knowledge, skills, attitude, humbleness, and fright.
This course is dedicated to the idiotic proposition that you can be taught the fundamentals of Organic chemistry, Inorganic chemistry, Qualitative analysis, Quantitative analysis, Physical chemistry, and Biochemistry all in one semester. The odds against any of you passing this course would be staggering to contemplate if there were any time for contemplation. However, there is not. Get out your notebooks. Max Shulman The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
It's not his job to remind me, it's my job to remember. Michael Crichton
It's all hoops-- but in anesthesia school the hoops are smaller, they're made of concertina wire, and they're on fire.
I'm just walking down the hill slowly...
Honesty without compassion is brutality.
The best leaders are both kind and tough. Without both, people don’t thrive. Bridgewater’s founder, Ray Dalio, believes there is no such thing as negative feedback or positive feedback; there is only accurate feedback, and we should care enough about each other to be accurate. By avoiding hard conversations and not telling people where they were struggling and how they could improve, I was depriving them of the chance to grow. My squeamishness was not only cowardly, it was selfish. If I really care about the people who work for me—if I create the atmosphere of deep personal consideration I want—I should care enough to be honest, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I should, of course, still consider the best way to deliver the message. There is a right time, and a right way, for every conversation. A Higher Loyalty by James Comey

....Anesthesia Aphorisms

Collected by Mark Lema and published in the January and July issues of ASA Newsletter see 2002

If you can't manage the surgeon, you have no business managing the anesthetic.
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
You can either lead the disease or let the disease lead you.
There is a direct relationship between the number of tattoos and the propofol dose.
There is an inverse relationship between the number of tattoos and the tolerance to regional anesthesia.
There is an inverse relationship between a surgeon's ability and the frequency that he/she asks for more muscle relaxant.
Ability and voice decibel level are inversely proportional.
There is no vital organ in the body that cannot be reached with a #14 needle and a good strong arm. (From The House of God Sam Shem)
There is no condition that cannot be made worse by surgery (and/or anesthesia).
It's easier to do it right the first time than to do it over.
Beware of colleagues with no sense of humor- they are not very bright and will blame you for their errors.
Sick people die! (use in place of self-flagellation when a negative outcome occurs).
Every patient is a preop, it's just a matter of figuring out for what!
The patient isn't bleeding dopamine!
Practice is the best of all instructors.
Numbers are tools, not rules.
If you can feel a pulse, don't panic.
Fibrillation is a sign of life.
The better you are, the luckier you become.
Be wary of patients whose risk exceeds their ejection fraction.
Treat the patient, not the monitor.
Prevoznik's Laws of Anesthesia
- Never anesthetize a patient who isn't there.
- Compromise, though not desirable, is permissible with all but patient safety.
- Death can be deferred but not defeated.
- It is much easier to add (drugs) than to subtract (them).
- Never argue with success just because you can't explain it.
- No block ever fails, some just have to be supplemented more than others.
- Fifteen minutes spent preoperatively with a patient is worth 15 mg of morphine as a premedicant.
Better to plan than to react!
The less the indications, the greater the complications.
Everyone eventually gets the reputation they deserve.
There is no such thing as too much I.V. access.
Perfect anesthesia can't overcome poor surgical technique.
Regional anesthesia is like a lazy cheetah: it can be spotty and may not work; general anesthesia always works.
Planning for emergence begins with the incision.
Airway trumps anything.
Don't poke a skunk.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The difference between a poison and a remedy is dosage. --Paracelsus (1493-1541).
Nothing is as inconspicuous as good anesthesia, nothing so obvious as its absence.
You never have to apologize for a good result.

Life

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.-- Mike Tyson
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. --Sir Winston Churchill
Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. (Ruth 1: 16)
Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? (Job 21:7)
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. (Ecclesiastes 8:14)
And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.-- The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
"Let us cross over the river,” he said calmly, “and rest under the shade of the trees.” Dying words, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -Albert Einstein
It's not the notes you play. It's the notes you don't play. Miles Davis
If you remember how to do a neuro check, you don't need a neuro check.
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month. Theodore Roosevelt
Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn't been one big decision. -Albert Einstein
The paradox is that both theories work remarkably well. Nature is behaving with us like that elderly rabbi to whom two men went in order to settle a dispute. Having listened to the first, the rabbi says: "You are in the right." The second insists on being heard. The rabbi listens to him and says: "You're also right." Having overheard from the next room, the rabbi's wife then calls out, "But they can't both be in the right!" The rabbi reflects and nods before concluding: "And you're right too." Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli
Because the obscure cannot be understood, [it] does not mean that the obvious should be denied (Latin proverb, Non ideo negari quod est apertum; quai comprehendi no potest quod est occultum)
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bride and bridegroom performed the Dance of Isaiah. Hip to hip, arms interwoven to hold hands, Desdemona and Lefty circumambulated the captain, once, twice, and then again, spinning the cocoon of their life together. No patriarchal linearity here. We Greeks get married in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began. ( Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides)
I don't take calls, I make calls. -Bill B.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. -Friedrich Nietzsche
[The Roman empire] creates desolation, and calls it peace. -Tacitus (Latin: Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant)
Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. -Thucydides
Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi [Latin, literally "What is permissible for Jove is not permissible for an ox"], often translated as "Gods may do what cattle may not".
When I teach..., on the first day I tell the students, You will not miss class. You will not be late to class. You will not use a laptop, or a cell phone, or wear a hat. My late-paper policy is simple: There will be no late papers, ever. That is my late-paper policy. -Dave Brandon
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Winston Churchill
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac
It is not me that can't keep a secret, it's the people I tell it to that can't. Abraham Lincoln
When you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Ben Franklin
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. MACBETH by Shakespeare
"Coffee tastes better if the latrines are dug downstream from an encampment" - US Army Field Regulations, 1861
Money is the mother's milk of politics. -Jesse Unruh
Klotho spins the thread at the beginning of one's life, Atropos weaves the thread into the fabric of one's actions, and Lachesis snips the thread at the conclusion of one's life.
James Bond: I have a dinner jacket.
Vesper Lynd: There are dinner jackets and dinner jackets; this is the latter. And I need you looking like a man who belongs at that table. (Casino Royale)
Perfect is the enemy of done.
When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you don't, pound the table.
Rebuke a wise man, he will thank you. Rebuke a fool, he will hate you.
Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
If you don't have a seat at the table, it probably means you are on the menu.
Two Spanish proverbs, from Ingrid Guerra-Lopez
- Goes up like a palm, drops like a coconut ( Sube como palma y cae como coco)
- The Devil is clever because he is old, not because he is the Devil ( Mais sabe el Diablo por viejo que por Diablo)
If you don't say it, you will never have to apologize for it.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same)
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Oscar Wilde
We can impress more by the power of our example, than by the example of our power. Bill Clinton
There is more to leading than riding in front.
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life... Maya Angelou
Out there on the ice? That's no place for a nervous person! Mickey Redmond
...Try being the football coach at Michigan in mid-August, when the temperatures regularly hit 90 degrees, and the players are practicing twice a day instead of hitting the beach with other guys their age. Try making them smile then. During just such a day, Lloyd Carr won over these Wolverines with some Popsicles and what has become a buzz phrase to every player. We were all dying out there, said center Rod Payne. Coach Carr blows the whistle and waves his hand for us to run over. A dune buggy full of Popsicles drives up, and they hand them out. Lloyd looks at us and has that smile on his face, and says, "Where else would you rather be?"
Hooray, hooray, it's the first of May. Outdoor "funning" begins today.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. AK Morrison
If you are going in the wrong direction, you can't get to where you want to go by running faster.
If you do things the way you always have, you get the results you always have.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -Friedrich von Schiller
Being typecast as Colombo? ... Well, it ain't cancer. Peter Falk
Dead people don't have trouble juggling their schedules.
It is not the critic who counts nor the man who points out how the strong men stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. -Teddy Roosevelt
Pericles, reflecting on the glory of Athens 2,500 years ago, "What made her great was men with the spirit of adventure. Men who knew their duty. Men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard. They gave to her their lives, to all of us for their own selves. They won prizes that never grow old."

Parents (born in the 1930s) had many pithy sayings

It's not who you know, it's who knows you.
Every shut eye ain't sleep, and every good bye ain't gone
If a dog will bring a bone, a dog will take a bone.
You never know who is going to give you your last drink of water.
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
You always need a good red nail polish.
You play with a puppy, he'll lick you in the face.
You're digging your grave with your teeth.
You can't make chicken soup out of chicken shit.
A little girl was walking in the winter and saw a frozen snake by the side of the road. She took pity on it, and put it in her pocket to warm it up. After a while, the snake warmed up, and bit her in the leg. She said, "Hey, I took care of you, what did you bite me for?" And the snake said, "Well, you knew I was a snake when you picked me up, didn't you?"
For every pot, there's a lid. (Vic Berglund)
The only difference between Detroit and the Third World, in terms of corruption, is Detroit don't have no goats in the street. (Sam Riddle)
Christ told us to love the poor not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Paul Dosch
For dinner, she fixed me hot tongue and cold shoulder.
If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's hot. -Winston Groom
Not my monkey, not my circus. (none of my business, not my problem)
They've turned a simple soup into gumbo (making a something simple very complicated)
Tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are. (Romanian proverb- Thanks to D. F.)
Never miss a good opportunity to shut up. Robert Gates
One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough. - James Thurber
Eat your broccoli first.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Sailing

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. -Psalm 107
But it wasn’t until he began to talk about his rowing career at the University of Washington that he started, from time to time, to cry. He talked about learning the art of rowing, about shells and oars, about tactics and technique. He reminisced about long, cold hours on the water under steel-gray skies, about smashing victories and defeats narrowly averted, about traveling to Germany and marching under Hitler’s eyes into the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, and about his crewmates. None of these recollections brought him to tears, though. It was when he tried to talk about "the boat" that his words began to falter and tears welled up in his bright eyes. At first I thought he meant the Husky Clipper, the racing shell in which he had rowed his way to glory. Or did he mean his teammates, the improbable assemblage of young men who had pulled off one of rowing’s greatest achievements? Finally, watching Joe struggle for composure over and over, I realized that "the boat" was something more than just the shell or its crew. To Joe, it encompassed but transcended both—it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition. It was a shared experience—a singular thing that had unfolded in a golden sliver of time long gone, when nine good-hearted young men strove together, pulled together as one, gave everything they had for one another, bound together forever by pride and respect and love.-- The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
These are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang. Moby Dick Herman Melville
Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. --Alfred Lord Tennyson
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. -Syrus Pubilius
Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing; Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Why is it that the Southern Ocean leg seems to be your strength? ( Paul Cayard, world champion sailor, on racing off Cape Horn in very brutal conditions): It's hard sailing, and you have to want to be there. It's cold, wet, usually windy, and goes on for a long, long time. I get myself in a mental place, which is that I see it as a unique and exceptional opportunity. In this fleet there are 60 or 70 sailors, and of those there are maybe 50 that probably don't enjoy the Southern Ocean. But I take all the negatives of it and put it in a box I call "Unusual Life Experiences", and when I'm 70 I'll remember the exceptional things I did in my life, and not the standard deal. When I'm there, I'm mentally in a place where I relish the opportunity to go down there and love it and compete hard. There's also age and experience... When life's easy anyone can drive, but when it's tough, the people who excel can make a difference.
Requiem: Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: “Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.”—Robert Louis Stevenson quoted in The Restless Wave by John McCain, Mark Salter

...Work

BullPuckey Bingo
You'd sooner work for Lucifer than him!
Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

...Maturity

Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults. Peter De Vries
In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. Aeschylus
It is more shameful to mistrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.
Waiting to get what you want is a definition of maturity; demanding satisfaction this instant, on the other hand, is a defining behavior of seven-year-olds. Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
I buried my father. I buried my son. I never left them, and they never left me. -Romy Schneider

Math and statistics

If you can't prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend they are the same thing. In the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind, hardly anybody will notice the difference. - Darrell Huff, 1954
"I only took the regular course"
"What was that?" inquired Alice.
"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied; "and then the different branches of Arithmetic- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision." -Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Disraeli
There is terror in numbers. Darrell Huff
First get your data- you can distort it later. Mark Twain
Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. Bertrand Russell
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Josef Stalin

Yogi Berra

Classical music isn't as bad as it sounds.
Don't you know anything? "I don't even suspect anything"
If fans don't want to come out to the ball game, nobody's going to stop them.
90% of hitting is mental, the other half is physical.
It ain't over till it's over.
I really didn't say half the things I've said.
The future ain't what it used to be.
You can see a lot just by looking.
Naah, that's gettin' so popular, nobody goes there anymore.

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