Quotes About Anecdote

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

My dad told me that when I was born my cheeks were so fat the doctors didn't know which end to spank.

Each second of every time has its own story and history to be filed.

For me, the characteristic features of a mystical and therefore untrustworthy, theory are that it is not refutable, that it appeals to authority, that it relies heavily on anecdote, that it makes a virtue of consensus (look how many people believe like me!), and that it takes the moral high ground. You will notice that this applies to most religions.

characteristic features of a mystical and therefore untrustworthy, theory are that it is not refutable, that it appeals to authority, that it relies heavily on anecdote, that it makes a virtue of consensus (look how many people believe like me!), and that it takes the moral high ground.

As scientists like to say: The plural of anecdote is not data.)

Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too.

Third, don't confuse an anecdote or a personal experience with the state of the world. Just because something happened to you, or you read about it in the paper or on the Internet this morning, it doesn't mean it is a trend. In a world of seven billion people, just about anything will happen to someone somewhere, and it's the highly unusual events that will be selected for the news or passed along to friends. An

Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too.

I know someone who was actually chased by a squirrel.)

The family historian must master the art of storytelling. What, after all, is truth without anecdote, history without events, explanation without narration--or yet life itself without a story? Stories are not just the wells from which we drink most deeply but at the same time the golden threads that hold and bind--Ariadne's precious string that leads us through the labyrinth that connects living present and the living past.

To me, writing is remembering something funny that happened, or maybe something I said seven years ago.

That reminds me of something that happened to me when I was a kid.

If I can get a story about a player, I would give you a ship load of numbers, batting averages and all just for that one precious story. That's the kind of thing that I love to do.

Learning by anecdote is risky, but waiting for scientific proof is too.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Ce Français avec qui je sortais. - Je l'avais oublié, dit-elle. Comment il s'appelait, déjà ? - Enfoiré, dis-je. - Exact.

An anecdote in which Kant captures himself in pithy fashion: [Kant's] Famulus, a theologian who was unable to connect philosophy to theology, once asked Kant for advice as to what he should read on the subject. Kant: Read travel literature. Famulus: In dogmatic philosophy, there are things I do not understand. Kant: Read travel literature. Walter Benjamin, 'Unknown Anecdotes about Kant', GS

My Great-aunt Squintina (grand-mother of Cousin Tabitha Twitchit) -- died of a thimble in a Christmas plum pudding. I never put any article of metal in MY puddings or pies. (Explained by the very elegantly attired Duchess, at a luncheon party.)

Judi Dench told me to shut up once. I was probably going on and on about something, in the way that I do sometimes, so she was being a good friend.

And Iranians never forget. You can't say my Aunt Jila's name without someone saying, "You mean the one who burned her rice?" That happened before I was born and even I know about it.

Chic Murray once told me, he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, 'Did you fall?' He said, 'No, I'm trying to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket.

We had a C-section. That's when the baby comes out like toast.