quotations about facts
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
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
Most facts that we don't use in some way will be lost to us.
ROBERT MADIGAN
How Memory Works
Miscellaneous facts are like shy and strange visitors at the opening of a ball; soon the music of thought and reason is heard--the disorderly assemblage changes, as if by magic, into little systems that spin around in the mazy whirlings of symmetry, beauty and grace.
J. MAHONEY
"Cramming", The Colorado School Journal, 1892
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
Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A History of Western Philosophy
Facts have a cruel way of substituting themselves for fancies. There is nothing more remorseless, just as there is nothing more helpful, than truth.
WILLIAM C. REDFIELD
address at Case School, Cleveland, Ohio, May 27, 1915
I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
A Study in Scarlet
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
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
The facts that you actually see with your own eyes don't always tell the truth, because sometimes there is something going on under it all that you don't see.
LINDA MARIE IRISH
It's a God Thing
The most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we should expect.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads.
J. M. BARRIE
The Greenwood Hat
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.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Six Characters in Search of an Author
The fatal futility of Fact.
JAMES JOYCE
Prefaces
If you believe only in facts and forget stories, your brain will live, but your heart will die.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Lord of Shadows
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts ... they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
"Huntsman, what quarry?"
Facts are lonely things.
DON DELILLO
Libra
The world divides into facts.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge.
ANDY BOROWITZ
"Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans", The New Yorker, May 12, 2015