Adolphe Quetelet quotes - page 3

Adolphe Quetelet was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, and statistician who played a key role in the development of social physics and statistics. His work introduced the concept of the "average man" and helped establish the use of statistical methods in social sciences. He is also known for creating the Body Mass Index (BMI). Here are 55 of his quotes:

Every social state supposes... a certain number and a certain order of crimes, these being merely the necessary consequences of its organisation. This observation.

Adolphe Quetelet

It would be an error... to suppose that science makes the artist; yet it lends to him the most powerful assistance. In general, it is difficult to keep it within due limits; and I shall even freely admit that Albert Durer, in his work upon the proportions of the human frame, has imparted to it a certain scientific dryness, which lessens its utility. One finds there more of the geometer than the artist, and the geometer, moreover, such as he was at a time when it had not yet been discovered how much the rules of style enhance the value of scientific works, and, above all, of those which appertain at the same time to the domain of the fine arts.

Adolphe Quetelet

The tables of criminality for different ages, given in my published treatise, merit at least as much faith as the tables of mortality, and verify themselves within perhaps even narrower limits; so that crime pursues its path with even more constancy than death. ...it is still betwixt the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, that, all things being equal, the greatest number of persons are to be found in that position [of a criminal].

Adolphe Quetelet

This observation is merely the extension of a law well known to all who have studied the condition of society in a philosophic manner: it is, that so long as the same causes exist, we must expect a repetition of the same effects. What has induced some to believe that moral phenomena did not obey this law, has been the too great influence ascribed all times to man himself over his actions.

Adolphe Quetelet