Some of my Favorite Quotes

A list of some of my favorite quotes and/or metaphors. I make no claims that they are wise, useful, or anything else.

• “They don’t think it be like it is but it do” – Oscar Gamble
• “When you get to a fork in the road, take it” – Yogi Berra
• “I don’t advise it, you understand, but it can be done. (Provided you have the right stuff)” – Tom Wolfe (from The Right Stuff)
• “re-ran the tape” -Stephen Gould (in reference to a replay of evolution and life)
• “Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.” – George Box
• “The size of C is a compromise.” – CEP
• “Consistency is the least we can ask for.” – Bickel and Doksum (on the topic of statistical tests)
• “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” – Benjamin Brewster (not Einstein nor Yogi Berra)
• “The bureaucracy is expanding, to meet the needs of of the expanding bureaucracy.” – Oscar Wilde
• “At one time I asked how many Merkavas had been produced, and I was told that this information was classified. I found it amusing, because there was a serial number on each tank chassis.” – Colonel Trevor Dupuy
• “When solving a problem of interest, do not solve a more general problem as an intermediate step.” – Vladimir Vapnik
• “a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones … Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.” – Nassim Taleb (from The Black Swan)
• “Think of my edits as stochastic gradient descent, the key word is stochastic.” – DW
• “The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before.” – Friedan (A New Life Plan for Women, as quoted in The Free World)