On Feb 9, 2004, at 4:28 AM, David H. Bailey wrote:

There's actually FOUR kinds of lies, to paraphrase Mark Twain (I think he originated it): 1) Lies, 2) Damn Lies, 3) Statistics and
4) Marketing.

The line appears in Twain's autobiography, but he himself attributes it to Benjamin Disraeli. More precisely, he characterizes the phrase as "attributed to" Disraeli, so perhaps he's just claiming that others have made the attribution.


There is no evidence that Disraeli ever used the phrase. It was, however, used (in slightly different form) in an 1895 article by Leonard Henry Courtney, in which he characterizes is as "the words of the Wise Statesman", which presumably led to the misattribution.

See <http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm>.

Not mentioned there is that the same quote has been attributed to Henry Labouchere, another articulate Liberal MP of the same time period. I'm not aware of any evidence for this attribution, either.

Two possibilities here: (1) One of these fellows really did use the line, and that's where Courtney got it, but no earlier written evidence has survived. (2) Courteney was just being rhetorical, and others later had their own interpretation of who the "Wise Statesman" must be.

mdl

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