All models are wrong, but some are useful.

All models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind.

Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

The only way to know how a complex system will behave-after you modify it-is to modify it and see how it behaves.

Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity.

Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the known.

The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning process.

To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it).

The management system which makes only a pretense of valuing employee involvement and encouraging employee empowerment merely breeds cynicism.

Management must provide employees with tools that will enable them to do their jobs better, and with encouragement to use these tools. In particular, they must collect data.

The larger question is, as virologist Jonas Salk once asked, "Are we being good ancestors?

When we are telling people to depend on favor rather than qualification, we are actually preparing a ground for our country to collapse.

And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself.

It is essential for men of science to take an interest in the administration of their own affairs or else the professional civil servant will step in - and then the Lord help you.

Gimme a visky with a ginger ale on the side - and don't be stinchy, beby.

From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

I trust in the Lord God Almighty ... that he will not take away from me the cup of his redemption, but firmly hope to drink from it today in his kingdom.

It is clear that whatever language of democracy [Barack] Obama and his administration use is very tactically deployed, and has as its main aim the extension of US power and interests.

Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow.

I wanted to write about what we were doing at the French Laundry, the recipes and the stories.