45 Quotes by Ronald Fisher

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

A book that I rate only second in importance in evolution theory to Darwin 's Origin (this as joined with its supplement Of Man), and also rate as undoubtedly one of the greatest books of the twentieth century

Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their statistical examination: that the statistician's task, in fact, is limited to the extraction of the whole of the available information on any particular issue.

... the actual and physical conduct of an experiment must govern the statistical procedure of its interpretation.

The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.

This is perhaps the most important book on evolutionary genetics ever written

Natural selection is not evolution.

We can set no limit to human potentialities; all that is best in man can be bettered; it is not a question of producing a highly efficient machine, ... but of quickening all the distinctly human features, all that is best in man, all the different qualities, some obvious, some infinitely subtle, which we recognize as humanly excellent.

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