Adolphe Quetelet Quotes

• The average man. The emergence of the concept.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Men, Average, Emergence

  8 Copy quote

• The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to precede every other inquiry into social physics, since it is, as it were, the basis. The average man, indeed, is in a nation what the centre of gravity is in a body; it is by having that central point in view that we arrive at the apprehension of all the phenomena of equilibrium and motion.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Determination, Men, Views

  8 Copy quote

• It would appear... that moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive, in inquiries of this kind, at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Science, Greatness, Numbers

  Francis Bisset Hawkins, Adolphe Quetelet (1973). “Comparative statistics in the 19th century”, Gregg Revivals

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Art, Science, Political

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Judging, Perfection, Progress

  6 Copy quote

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