Mark Twain Quotes
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
Twain, Mark. "Chapters from My Autobiography." North American Review, 1906.
There is no known writing of Disraeli's with this quote although it is very commonly attributed to him as in this case by Mark Twain. Disraeli was even quoted earlier in 1895 by English Parliamentarian Leonard H. Courtney who said, “…the words of the Wise Statesman, "Lies— damned lies— and statistics," and although he does not mention Disraeli by name, the “Wise Statesman” was a name commonly used for the great prime minister and the timing was right. The two together make the quotation very probably attributable to Disraeli. See linked quote.
He does not claim that a prediction may not coincidentally turn out to be accurate—just that the predictor has no certainty whatsoever and at best was guessing and at worse manipulating.
Some politicians have subsequently used the phrase. For example, see {625508} .
The Presidential Campaigns of 2008 and 2012 shocked many Americans for the blatant lies that opponents of President Obama wrote and broadcast and then some of the retaliatory lies that Obama defenders responded with. However, this quotation from a 19th century political historian shows us that blatant lying in American politics is not at all new.
After the Constitution had been ratified, there was a concerted attempt on the part of the Southern Slave States to minimize the importance of the Declaration of Independence. They feared that the equality principle in the Declaration should be seen by Americans as desirable policy which clearly meant slavery was untenable. There were three approaches all used by the Southerners. First, they tried to make it clear that the Declaration had no weight in American law or moral principles as it was superseded by the Constitution. Second, they claimed that it could only have applied to white men as Black males were not really men. Third, that the statement was patently false. This quotation illustrates the latter.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".
