There are very many pithy sayings to this effect, most famously "All models are wrong, but some are useful" (perhaps by George Box, but I can't find this exact

There are very many pithy sayings to this effect, most famously "All models are wrong, but some are useful" (perhaps by George Box, but I can't find this exact phrase attributed to him) Even Von Neumann said "truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations."