Francis Galton
British polymath who founded psychometrics and statistical psychology.
Most quoted
"I have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, that for two thousand years the human race got on very well without scientific psychology, and that it is only in the last century that the subject has been recognized as one to which attention should be paid."
— from Book, 1883
"General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life, and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently, those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and a horror of statistics."
— from Hereditary Genius, 1869
"The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praised material success is to throw the whole weight of one's mind, one's aim, one's strength, upon that side of work which, in the sight of God and the angels, is the true work."
— from Book, 1908
All quotes by Francis Galton (72)
The average man is as much a product of his environment as of his heredity.
Science confers power on those who know it.
The world has been very slow to recognize the importance of heredity.
I see no limit to the possible progress of the human race.
The method of multiple working hypotheses is no substitute for the method of excluding hypotheses that have no basis.
Beauty is an accidental and transient quality.
The measurement of human faculties is the scientific basis of eugenics.
In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact.
The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praised material success is to throw the whole weight of one's mind, one's aim, one's strength, upon that side of work which, in the sight of God and the angels, is the true work.
Plodding men succeed by plodding.
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
Heredity is the passing on of qualities from parents to offspring.
The correlation between relatives is a measure of their common heredity.
I am almost a hundred years old, and I have seen many changes in my lifetime.
The regression towards mediocrity in hereditary stature is one of the most remarkable discoveries in the physiology of inheritance.
England is the country of the very poor, the very rich, and those who cannot be classified.
The finger-prints of man are his own peculiar signature.
It is the duty of the state to encourage the breeding of the better sort.
The weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of men.
An organism is a complex of mutually interdependent parts.
Contemporaries of Francis Galton
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Francis Galton (1822–1911).