Adolphe Quetelet Quotes
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As laws and the principles of religion and morality are influencing causes, I have then not only the hope, but, what you have not, the positive conviction, that society may be ameliorated and reformed.
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It has seemed to me that the theory (calcul) of probabilities ought to serve as the basis for the study of all the sciences, and particularly of the sciences of observation.
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Expect not... that efforts for the moral regeneration of man can be immediately crowned with success; operations upon masses are ever slow in progress, and their effects distant.
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Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.
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I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence.
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The average man. The emergence of the concept.
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My aim has been, not only to go once more through the task of Albert Durer, but to execute it also on an extended scale.
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The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a kind of centre to which they all converge. We may even judge the degree of perfection to which a science has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation.
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I have been surprised to find how little variety of opinion exists, in different places, regarding what they concurred in terming the beautiful.
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It is only by long and laborious study, and by the comparison of a number of individuals, that it will be possible to succeed in establishing correct average proportions each age, and in settling the limits betwixt they can be made to vary, without ceasing to be accurate and faithful to nature—our first and guide in this difficult study.