Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination. Andrew Lang, 1844-1912, Scottish poet, critic, anthropologist; best known for collecting folk and fairy tales like those of the Brothers Grimm. (quote often mis-attributed–in my estimation–to Mark Twain).
“I don’t know what I may seem to the world,” he said before he died, “but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth […]
The intimacy of friendship, Derrida writes, lies in the sensation of recognizing oneself in the eyes of another. Hua Hsu, citing The Politics of Friendship, by Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), French deconstructionist philosopher.