Fragile Beings

Numbers are fragile beings which, being tortured, end up admitting all we want them to say.

[Original: Les chiffres sont des êtres fragiles qui, à force d'être torturés, finissent par avouer tout ce qu'on veut leur faire dire.]

-- Alfred Sauvy (1898 - 1990), demographer, anthropologist, and historian of the French economy; he coined the term Third World ("Tiers Monde") in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War