Sturgeon's Law/Quotes

"How many dramas have you in France, sir?" said Candide to the Abbé.
"Five or six thousand."
"What a number!" said Candide. "How many good?"
"15 or 16" replied the other [critic].

"What a number!" said Martin.

—Voltaire, Candide

"The animes represent a wide body of entertainment which includes some good stuff, as well as an absolutely incomprehensible amount of shit. Like anything."

—Andrew Hussie, creator of MS Paint Adventures

"Don't feel bad, Homer. Nine out of ten religions fail in their first year."

—God, The Simpsons

"The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published.
The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does."

—Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

"Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."

—Benjamin Disraeli

"I started Lists Galore 5 years ago as a place to celebrate my obsession with lists.
Fantastic lists were all over the internet and I made it my mission to track them down and share them with my readers.
There was an embarrassment of riches when it came to awesome lists.
Recently, however, low-quality lists have become more and more prevalent.
I find myself sorting through way too much trash in order to find the gems. It's just not fun anymore."

—Andi, List Galore, So Long And Thanks For All The Lists.

Take the Renaissance. Yes, it gave us many masterpieces. But you had artists' workshops operating full time in every city of modest size, all over Europe. The artists of the Renaissance turned out a huge amount of work. Most of it is forgotten, and rightly so.

—unknown, quoted by John Hoagland, Using Poser to Create Artwork

Gene Spafford's Usenet Axiom #3:
"Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to Usenet."
Corollary #5:
"In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree on what constitutes the 10%."
Corollary #6:
"Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap, too."