19 Inspirational Quotes About Data

If you were asked to share one inspirational thought about data, what would it be? From tech leaders to data ops experts, many people have shared their most thought-provoking quotes about data.

Here are some of our favorite quotes about data:

  1. “Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a freeway.” — Geoffrey Moore
  2. “In God we trust, all others bring data.” — W. Edwards Deming
  3. “Data is the new oil.” — Clive Humby
  4. “No great marketing decisions have ever been made on qualitative data.” — John Sculley
  5. “Torture the data, and it will confess to anything.” — Ronald Coase
  6. “With data collection, ‘the sooner the better’ is always the best answer.” — Marissa Mayer
  7. “Big data isn’t about bits, it’s about talent.” — Douglas Merrill
  8. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” — Sherlock Holmes
  9. “You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” — Daniel Keys Moran
  10. “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” — Jim Barksdale
  11. “Above all else, show the data.” — Edward R. Tufte
  12. “Big data is at the foundation of all of the megatrends that are happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to gaming.” — Chris Lynch
  13. “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories – tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.” — Chip and Dan Heath
  14. “Without a systematic way to start and keep data clean, bad data will happen.” — Donato Diorio
  15. “Contact data ages like fish, not wine … it gets worse as it gets older, not better.” — Gregg Thaler
  16. “Data really powers everything that we do.” — Jeff Weiner
  17. “Data that is loved tends to survive.” — Kurt Bollacker
  18. “Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.” — Charles Babbage
  19. “Where there is data smoke, there is business fire.” — Thomas Redman