I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.

Brandeis’s remark is a warning against letting statistical averages substitute for lived reality. An “average” can conceal extreme inequality or volatility: the same mean can describe both stability and hardship. His meal example shows how a tidy aggregate (three meals a day) can mask deprivation (none on one day) and excess (six on another). The broader implication fits Brandeis’s reputation as a jurist attentive to concrete facts and human consequences—urging decision-makers to look past abstractions, summaries, and generalizations to the distribution of outcomes and the individual case.