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

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.

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.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.

Success comes from closing the gap between who you are today and your ultimate potential.

The pain will always be in you — but you will not always be in pain.

We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.

When my wrestlers got their hands raised, I jumped for joy.

I'm sick of Soup Of The Day, man. It's time we make a decision. I need to know what Soup From Now On is.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

How much more can you give? Other than, literally, open-heart surgery onstage? Not much. But the only cure you have right now is the honesty of going, this is who you are. I know who I am.

Your destiny is shaped by choice, never by chance. Beware the decisions you make, no matter how small, for they will be your salvation...or your death.