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No one can use maps or make maps safely and effectively without understanding map scales, map projections, and map symbols.

— Mark Monmonier

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More quotes by Mark Monmonier

Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it is essential. To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or screen, a map must distort reality.

Whenever a map of count data makes sense, perhaps to place a map of rates in perspective, graphic theory condemns using a choropleth map because its ink (or toner) metaphor is misleading.

Publication of my commentary in the Communications from Readers section might be one way for The American Cartographer to affirm a commitment to openness, and to demonstrate once again that efforts to stifle dissenting opinion tend to backfire.

Although cartographic journals have been rigorously reviewing software for nearly a decade, the profession today seems as powerless against stupidly designed software as it was against the flagrant misuse of the Mercator projection.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Monmonier (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.