A Quote by Walter Lippmann

You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.

Walter Lippmann

Quote Topics

Census Fellow Forever Goes He Man House Maker Man Masters Mercy Other Real Results Situation Statistical

Quote Author

Walter Lippmann
American - Journalist
September 23, 1889 - December 14, 1974

The actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It's the same Census Bureau that's considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons.

Kenneth Prewitt

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.

Aaron Sorkin

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census,' and people fall asleep.

Aaron Sorkin

Money nowadays is money; money brings office; money gains friends; everywhere the poor man is down. [Lat., In pretio pretium nunc est; dat census honores, Census amicitias; pauper ubique jacet.]

Ovid

...the number of saintly men has not yet risen to the level where the census makes them a separate statistical category.

George Stigler

My subcommittee will be thoroughly investigating this issue and demanding answers from Census officials on allegations that the Census Bureau is changing the wording of survey questions used to determine our nation's annual report on health insurance coverage.

Blake Farenthold

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Anthony Hopkins

One of the stock Sydney jokes is of the census-taker who enquires: 'How many children have you, ma'am?' 'Two living and three in Melbourne.'

Elspeth Huxley

A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.

Thomas Harris

Luke [the gospel writer] screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius - a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole - but it happened too late in 6 AD, long after Herod's death.

Richard Dawkins

The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. Statistical terms and statistical methods are necessary in reporting the mass data of social and economic trends, business conditions, 'opinion' polls, the census. But without writers who use the words with honesty and understanding and readers who know what they mean, the result can only be semantic nonsense.

Darrell Huff

TREE HOUSE A tree house, a free house, A secret you and me house, A high up in the leafy branches Cozy as can be house. A street house, a neat house, Be sure to wipe your feet house Is not my kind of house at all- Let's go live in a tree house.

Shel Silverstein

Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.

O. Henry

All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.

Upton Sinclair

I believe that at least 70 percent of parenting goes to the mother. In our house, I'm the one who knows about all the school stuff, helps with the homework, organizes the play dates, and remembers the birthday parties.