"In still moments by the sea life seems large-drawn and simple. It is there we can see into ourselves."

“So if the worth of the arts were measured by the matter with which they deal, this art-which some call astronomy, others astrology, and many of the ancients the consummation of mathematics-would be by far the most outstanding. This art which is as it were the head of all the liberal arts and the one most worthy of a free man leans upon nearly all the other branches of mathe matics. Arithmetic, geometry, optics, geodesy, mechanics, and whatever others, all offer themselves in its service.”

“This country has achieved its commercial and financial supremacy under a regime of private ownership. It conquered the wilderness, built our railroads, our factories, our public utilities, gave us the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, the automobile, the airplane, the radio and a higher standard of living for all the people than obtains anywhere else in the world. No great invention ever came from a government-owned industry.”

“My remarks are, as always, apt, sound, and to the point. (Hercule Poirot)”

“I like many different things you know so I'm probably going to experiment, and if I didn't I'd be a little bit strange and boring and stiff and kind of dead, and I'm very not that.”

“A woman is as young as her knees.”

“Right now you are one choice away from a new beginning.”

“Be approximately right rather than exactly wrong.”

Source : John Wilder Tukey, David Roxbee Cox, Henry I. Braun (1994). “The Collected Works of John W. Tukey: Philosophy and principles of data analysis, 1949-1964”

“People lived in the same apartments for years. You'd meet a group of kids in kindergarten, and you'd still be with them in high school. No one ever left the neighborhood.”