Treatise of Man and the Development of His Faculties Quotes

“I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence.”
― Adolphe Quetelet, A Treatise on man and the Development of his Faculties

“The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to precede every other inquiry into social physics, since it is, as it were, the basis. The average man, indeed, is in a nation what the centre of gravity is in a body; it is by having that central point in view that we arrive at the apprehension of all the phenomena of equilibrium and motion.”
― Adolphe Quetelet, Treatise of Man and the Development of His Faculties