28 Quotes by Ronald A. Fisher

We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and intelligent young men out in the word with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be.

Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.

To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.

The best time to plan an experiment is after you’ve done it.

The statistician cannot evade the responsibility for understanding the process he applies or recommends.

Natural selection is not evolution.

Faith Is Not Credulity.

Experimental observations are only experience carefully planned in advance, and designed to form a secure basis of new knowledge.

We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form: The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.