The plural of anecdote is not data.

An anecdote is a chunk of information that is true, 
but may not be representative of the truth 
(i.e. it's biased toward the point that the story teller is trying to make)

Anecdotes are fundamentally biased: 
They caught the attention of someone, 
and caused emotions that made him remember it. 
There is no way human attention can be statistically independent,

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, 
in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. 
You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, 
but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. 
Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant.
--A.C.Doyle

Statistics is in the business of evaluating the quality of evidence 
for or against some proposition.

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence" 
--Hume

Correlation doesn’t imply causation, 
but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively 
while mouthing ‘look over there’.
--xkcd

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
--G B Shaw

In God we trust. All others must bring data.
--W. Edwards Deming

To let emotion or wishful thinking distort your analysis is the number one mistake.

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague,
than an exact answer to the wrong question.
--John Tukey

If you torture your data enough it will say whatever you want it to say.

"If we have data, let's look at data. 
If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine."
--James Barksdale

The whole of mathematics is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
--Einstein