"Enough research will tend to support your conclusions"
About this Quote
“Enough research will tend to support your conclusions” is Bloch at his most lethal: a one-line skewering of how “facts” get manufactured in everyday life. The phrasing is the trick. “Enough” doesn’t mean rigorous; it means sufficient in volume to overwhelm doubt. “Tend to” offers the perfect bureaucratic shrug, the little statistical fig leaf that lets bias dress itself up as reason. Bloch isn’t celebrating research; he’s mocking the way we launder certainty through the appearance of method.
The intent is satirical, but the target is serious: confirmation bias as a social technology. If you start with a conclusion, research becomes scavenging. You don’t ask, “What’s true?” You ask, “What can I cite?” Bloch captures the temptation that shadows every essay, memo, TED Talk, and policy brief: the urge to treat evidence like a costume department. With enough costume changes, your argument looks inevitable.
Context matters. Bloch’s lines, often packaged as “Murphy’s Law”-style aphorisms, emerged from a mid-to-late 20th-century culture increasingly obsessed with expertise, reports, and managerial rationality. He’s puncturing the myth that more information automatically yields better judgment. In an era of databases, dashboards, and endless search results, the joke reads less like a quip and more like a warning label.
The subtext is bleakly democratic: anyone can win the argument if they can out-research the room. Truth becomes a stamina contest, and the most persuasive person is the one with the most footnotes, not the cleanest thinking.
The intent is satirical, but the target is serious: confirmation bias as a social technology. If you start with a conclusion, research becomes scavenging. You don’t ask, “What’s true?” You ask, “What can I cite?” Bloch captures the temptation that shadows every essay, memo, TED Talk, and policy brief: the urge to treat evidence like a costume department. With enough costume changes, your argument looks inevitable.
Context matters. Bloch’s lines, often packaged as “Murphy’s Law”-style aphorisms, emerged from a mid-to-late 20th-century culture increasingly obsessed with expertise, reports, and managerial rationality. He’s puncturing the myth that more information automatically yields better judgment. In an era of databases, dashboards, and endless search results, the joke reads less like a quip and more like a warning label.
The subtext is bleakly democratic: anyone can win the argument if they can out-research the room. Truth becomes a stamina contest, and the most persuasive person is the one with the most footnotes, not the cleanest thinking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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