Lies, damned lies and statistics

It is fascinating how often we attribute things to people without checking. However, I know a few people who are SCRUPULOUS in checking. One is Garson O'Toole of Quote Investigator's fame (here), and the other is Michael Quinion of World Wide Words (here). WikiQuote is also reasonably accurate (here). 

My husband and I were talking about the coiner of the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics" recently, and he thought it was a saying of Mark Twain's, and I thought that Mark Twain had attributed it to someone else. In full, the unattributed quote is "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". 

I consulted the first of my three gurus: Garson O'Toole. A quick search showed that Mark Twain in 1895 had attributed the saying to former British PM, Benjamin Disraeli (O'Toole, 2022). However, the quote was not found in any of Disraeli's works, despite so much of Mr Disraeli's work having been formalised in writing. Undeterred from the lack of evidence, Garson O'Toole (2022) did a thorough search and found that one T. Mackay, in a letter to the editor of The National Observer on 8 June 1891, said "It has been wittily remarked that there are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a ‘fib,’ the second is a downright lie, and the third and most aggravated is statistics" (Mackay, 1891), which is pretty close to the quote as we know it today. 

Neither WikiQuote nor Michael Quinion had any dates earlier than 8 June 1891, so O'Toole (2022) seems to offer the earliest evidence. However, it sounds to me from Mr Mackay's letter that the witticism may have already been in relatively common usage in June of 1891 (NB: the usually utterly accurate Quote Investigator noted the date of Mr Mackay's letter as 13 June when it was the 8th). So the saying "lies..." etc is older than 8 June 1891. It was not created by Mark Twain: he reused it four years later. On another continent. And attributed it to a famous person: PM Benjamin Disraeli (as we so often do today, attributing to a famous person), but that attribution may not have been accurate enough. 

Evidence may be found that Mr Disraeli may indeed be the originator; but we lack evidence for that right now. We do have evidence that the first person currently having recorded it in writing was Mackay (1891).

It will be interesting to see what other sources are found as time goes by. Hopefully we may find the originator :-)

Sam

References:

Mackay, T. (1891, June 13). National Pensions [Letters to the Editor]. The National Observer, 6(134), p. 93. https://archive.org/details/sim_the-national-observer-and-british-review-of-politics_1891-06-13_6_134/page/93/mode/1up

Quinion, M. (2025). Search. World Wide Words. https://worldwidewords.org/search.htm

O'Toole, G. (2022, June 22). Quote Origin: There Are Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. Quote Investigator. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/06/22/lies-statistics/

Wikiquote. (2025). Home. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page