Famous Fact Quotes

The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no facts at this table.

The sky is not less blue because the blind man does not see it.

I often wish that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that no one has heard before.

Never forget the facts are important but it's the opinion of the facts that causes comment.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

Facts are ventriloquists dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored.

There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.

Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Now, what I want is, facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!

I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, Where? What? and turn away.

I deal with the obvious. I present, reiterate and glorify the obvious -- because the obvious is what people need to be told.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal.

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.

Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows.

One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine.

I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.

A fact is like a sack -- it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.

What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts?

I grow daily to honor facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing -- a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.