quotations about facts
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, Sheroes
Basic facts tend always to be those most easily overlooked.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
I might show facts as plain as day:
But, since your eyes are blind, you'd say,
"Where? What?" and turn away.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
"A Sketch"
Since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Public Opinion
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
letter to Charles Kingsley, September 23, 1860
This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.
SUSAN JACOBY
The Age of American Unreason
To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to Michele Besso, October 8, 1952
Sometimes we use facts. Sometimes we avoid or ignore them. Sometimes we even reshape them or dispose of them because of new knowledge. In other words, facts are partly solid and partly malleable, and they don't always reveal a clean, coherent truth.
KEITH VARGO
"Way of the Warrior", Black Belt Magazine, December 2003
Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.
EDITH WHARTON
Xingu and Other Stories
Most facts that we don't use in some way will be lost to us.
ROBERT MADIGAN
How Memory Works
Most men are less afraid of ghosts than of facts.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
But no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Tallulah", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection
Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of madness, because sanity is a spirit.
G.K. CHESTERTON
"On the Classics,", Selected Essays
Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A History of Western Philosophy
Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
THOMAS SOWELL
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Sometimes fact-checking can feel unnatural because it goes against the way the brain is hardwired. Our brains are wired to scan for the threats in our environment and all the problems we need to fix. In psychology this is called the negativity bias. But in most cases this disposition doesn't serve us well. Instead, training the brain to look for facts that fuel a hopeful and optimistic picture of reality can help motivate us. Again, I am not talking about ignoring reality. I'm talking about moving our focus from paralyzing facts to activating ones to create an optimistic, empowered mindset.
MICHELLE GIELAN
Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change
Facts, therefore, have merely a potential and, as it were, subsequent value, and the only advantage of possessing them is the possibility of drawing conclusions from them; in other words, of rising to the idea, the principle, the law which governs them. Our knowledge is composed not of facts, but of the relations which facts and ideas bear to themselves and to each other; and real knowledge consists not in an acquaintance with facts, which only makes a pedant, but in the use of facts, which makes a philosopher.
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE
Essays
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
A Scandal in Bohemia