Quotes About Accuracy

Louis Rendu] collects observations, makes experiments, and tries to obtain numerical results; always taking care, however, so to state his premises and qualify his conclusions that nobody shall be led to ascribe to his numbers a greater accuracy than they merit. It is impossible to read his work, and not feel that he was a man of essentially truthful mind and that science missed an ornament when he was appropriated by the Church.

Her sense of pitch was near-perfect, and it was critical to the blimp speech.

About the worst thing an honest man can do is make an honest mistake." John Wayne

Where I fail in accuracy, I hope I make up for it in plausibility.

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

The primary conception of tennis is to get the ball over the net and at the same time to keep it within bounds of the court; failing this, within the borders of the neighborhood.

Our fingers are frustratingly accurate in using the information we give them. If we imagine sloppily, we play sloppily; if we imagine clearly and precisely, that is how we play.

Watch the History Channel if you want it literal and historically perfect.

The least veracious man will tell truly the color of his coat, the hour of his dinner, the materials of his shoes.

When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.

I like to verify things independently. It's not like any of us are infallible.

If the critics are right that I've made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended.

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.

You don't swing at any pitch. You swing at the ones you can hit.

Something as trivial as a little gift of candy to medical residents improves the speed and accuracy of their diagnoses. In general, positive emotion enables us to broaden our understanding of what confronts us. This

We talked to a lot of psychologists who were working in business schools who put men and women in front of scientific reasoning quizzes. The women will routinely think they have done less well than they have done. The men will think they have done better than they have done. In reality, they have done about the same.

Just as the supposed number may differ from the true number by fully 100, 150, or even 200 in a flock of 600 sheep, so may I be even more out of my reckoning in the case of these very little animalcules.

I have always been honest about my recollection of events.

Most people don't reconcile their bank accounts.

Little things can make such a big difference during recording.

I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?' Anything in my books that is in quotes comes from some kind of living historical document: a letter, a memoir, a court transcript, a newspaper interview.

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.

I get so carried away in interviews and deliver 1,500-word treatises, then find it's been reduced to something pithier but also not quite accurate. Although I imagine there are people I work with who wish they could edit me every day.