There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Twain wrote these words but did not claim them: he gave them as ‘the remark attributed to Disraeli’. No source in Disraeli’s writings or speeches has been found, and the earliest known uses come years after his death in 1881, in Britain: a letter in the National Observer of June 1891 already calls statistics the ‘third and most aggravated’ kind of lie, a query in Notes and Queries the same year asks who coined it, and the politician Leonard Courtney, later president of the Royal Statistical Society, used it in 1895. It grew from an older joke about witnesses: ‘liars, damned liars, and experts’ (1885). Twain’s chapter made the line famous in America, and it is now usually credited to him. Who first said it is unknown.

In an autobiographical chapter, written in Florence in 1904 and published in the North American Review in July 1907, Twain compares how many words a day he wrote in 1868, 1897 and 1904, concludes that he has been slowing down, and then sees that his sums leave out the hours worked. He quotes the saying, crediting it to Disraeli, about his own figures. The chapter was reprinted in Paine’s edition of the Autobiography (1924; vol. I, p. 246, according to Wikiquote).

Numbers can be arranged to mislead even more effectively than words; statistics are the worst kind of lie.

• ShortenedLies, damned lies, and statistics. The proverbial short form.

Truth, Lies

• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. (not found) Albert Einstein
• The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. (paraphrase)
• All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. (misattributed) Lucretius
• The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde
• Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. (misattributed) Seneca the Younger

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
• gutenberg.org/ebooks/19987

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Attributed to Mark Twain. No. Twain wrote it down, in a chapter of his autobiography (1907), but as a remark attributed to Disraeli, which no one has found in Disraeli. Who coined it is not known; the earliest uses are British, from 1891. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/ (checked 21 October 2026).

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