Andrew Lang foi um escritor escocês. Dono de vasta erudição, tornou-se uma autoridade em literatura grega, francesa e inglesa, folclore, antropologia, história escocesa, telepatia e em outros campos. Realizou pesquisas físicas e deixou alguns livros de poesia. Wikipedia
“Alguns usam a estatística como os bêbados usam postes: mais para apoio do que para iluminação.”
use statistics as a drunk man uses lamp-posts — for support rather than for illumination
Andrew Lang citado em "Essentials of debate" - Página 72, de John Reinder Pelsma - Publicado por Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1937 - 168 páginas
1910 Speech, quoted in Alan L. Mackay The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977), as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 488.
Widely attributed to Lang (e.g. in Elizabeth M. Knowles, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford University Press; and in Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, Columbia University Press).
Variante: He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts—for support rather than illumination.
“They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”
Sonnet The Odyssey (1879), in Introduction to his translation (with S. H. Butcher) of Homer's Odyssey.
“If indeed there be a god in heaven.”
Andrew Lang (1879), with S. H. Butcher, prose translation of Homer's Odyssey, Book XVII, line 484.
Andrew Lang (1900) "[ Anthropology and Religion]", In: The Making of Religion, (Chapter II), Longmans, Green, and C°, London, New York and Bombay, 1900, pp. 39–64.
Ballade of Autumn
Ballades in Blue China (1880)